Storage chip sector erupts: 'Chips are more expensive than gold' becomes market focus

1、 Price skyrockets: Accumulated 160% increase within the year, high-end chips are more expensive than gold

As the pricing anchor of the global storage chip market, Samsung Electronics has embarked on an unprecedented price increase cycle in 2026. The DRAM contract price was directly increased by 100% in the first quarter, and further increased by 30% in the second quarter. Based on the price at the beginning of the year, the cumulative increase for the year has reached 160%. Even more shocking is that some high-end server DRAM chips (such as DDR 516Gb specifications) are priced at 327700 Korean won per gram, which is 45.9% higher than the gold price (224600 Korean won per gram). Since the mainstream DDR4 memory chips started rising in September 2025, the highest increase has exceeded 600%, completely overturning the traditional perception of "gold preservation", and storage chips have become a true "digital hard currency".

The core of this round of price increases is the complete imbalance between supply and demand caused by the explosion of AI computing power. The global demand for HBM high bandwidth memory in AI servers is growing exponentially, and the storage requirements of a single AI server are several times that of traditional servers. Top manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix have shifted a large amount of DRAM production capacity to high profit HBM products, resulting in a continuous contraction of general memory supply. With the completion of inventory depletion in the industry and the synchronous recovery of downstream data centers and consumer electronics demand, the global storage market is facing severe supply shortages, and prices are entering an accelerated upward channel.

2、 A-shares respond across the board: sectors open high and rise, leading individual stocks strengthen in batches

Affected by the favorable transmission of international market price increases, the A-share storage chip sector exploded at the opening on April 10th. Ruineng Technology hit the daily limit up, becoming the leader in the sector's upward trend; Demingli hit the daily limit up during trading, with a market value exceeding 100 billion yuan; Puran Holdings, Baiwei Storage, Lanqi Technology, and others have all opened significantly higher than 5%. From a fundamental perspective, domestic storage manufacturers are deeply benefiting from the industry's upward cycle: on the one hand, product prices are synchronously rising in the international market, and gross profit margins continue to improve; On the other hand, domestic substitution is accelerating, and in the context of global supply shortages, top domestic enterprises have full orders and high capacity utilization rates.

From the perspective of market performance, this round of storage chip market has strong sustainability and high momentum. In the US stock market, storage concept stocks such as SanDisk have risen by over 30% this month, continuously setting new historical highs and providing strong external linkage support for A-shares. Multiple international investment banks have released research reports stating that the current super cycle of storage chips is dominated by AI demand, and the supply-demand gap is expected to continue until 2027, with the price upward cycle far from over.

3、 The industrial chain benefits deeply, and the market is expected to continue to perform well

As the "grain" of the electronics industry, the price increase of storage chips will drive the reconstruction of the entire industry chain's profits. The upstream design, manufacturing, and testing processes directly benefit, while downstream module and terminal manufacturers face cost pressures but have strong cost transmission capabilities in the context of strong demand. For the A-share market, the storage chip sector has become the core engine of the technology mainline. Driven by both high performance expectations and high industry prosperity, the sector's popularity is expected to continue to rise.