Micron's CEO says memory prices contracted for 2027 are already running well above 2026 levels, with industry executives expecting the squeeze to last years.
Memory industry executives now expect RAM supply constraints to persist through 2028, driven largely by AI data center demand pulling capacity away from consumer and enterprise hardware. Pricing for 2027 contracts is already running far above current 2026 levels, according to Micron's leadership.
The squeeze compounds a separate signal from the PC market, where shipments just fell 20.1% in their sharpest quarterly decline since Q1 2023 — a drop analysts warn could be the start of a longer downward cycle.
Every company buying servers, laptops, or cloud capacity should expect hardware costs to stay elevated well beyond the current AI buildout cycle, not just through the next product refresh. CFOs budgeting multi-year infrastructure spend need to price in sustained memory inflation, not a temporary spike.
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