You did not imagine it. Laptops cost more. Phones cost more. Memory upgrades that were cheap last year are now a luxury line item. In June 2026, Apple announced higher prices on MacBooks and iPads, passing on the rising cost of memory chips. Gartner has projected PC prices to rise about 17 percent and smartphone prices about 13 percent compared with 2025.
The culprit is not a factory fire, a pandemic or a trade war. It is a tower of silicon less than a millimeter tall, sitting next to an AI processor in a data center you will never visit. AI did not just buy the future. It bought the memory inside your next device.
12 dies stacked in one HBM chip |
About 3 times the cost of ordinary memory |
2028 earliest relief, say insiders |
Meet the Chip That Ate Your RAM
It is called HBM, short for high bandwidth memory. It is the DRAM industry's answer to a hard problem: AI models need to move terabytes of data per second into the processor, and ordinary memory cannot keep up. Engineers call this limit the memory wall.
So they built upward. One HBM chip is a pile of up to 12 thinned DRAM dies, connected by vertical channels called through silicon vias and joined with microscopic solder balls. The whole tower is about 750 micrometers thick and sits within a millimeter of the GPU, linked by as many as 2,048 connections. Nvidia's B300 carries eight of these stacks, which means 96 DRAM dies around a single processor.
| One HBM stack, seen from the side |
|---|
| DRAM die 12 (top) |
| DRAM dies 11 down to 2, each thinned and linked by vertical channels (through silicon vias) |
| DRAM die 1 |
| Base die: moves bits to the GPU |
| AI GPU beside it, about 1 mm away, up to 2,048 connections |
Simplified illustration. Every layer is silicon that could have been phone or laptop memory.
| Feature | Ordinary DRAM | HBM |
|---|---|---|
| Design | Single chips on a module | Up to 12 dies stacked in 3D |
| Typical home | PCs, phones, consoles | AI GPUs in data centers |
| Relative cost | 1 times | About 3 times |
| Share of packaged GPU cost | Not applicable | 50 percent or more |
| Who gets served first | Whoever is left | The biggest AI buyers |
The Squeeze: One Factory, Two Customers
Three companies make the vast majority of the world's DRAM: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. When AI buyers pay three times more per bit and sign predictable, enormous contracts, the rational move is to shift production toward HBM and high capacity server memory. Every wafer moved is a wafer not making the DDR5 and mobile memory that goes into your devices.
The shift is dramatic. Micron says HBM and other cloud memory went from 17 percent of its DRAM revenue in 2023 to nearly 50 percent in 2025.
| 2023 | 17% |
| 2025 | Nearly 50% |
Micron: HBM and cloud memory as a share of its DRAM revenue.
Micron also expects the HBM market to grow from 35 billion dollars in 2025 to 100 billion dollars by 2028, larger than the entire DRAM market was in 2024. Its CEO told analysts that demand will outstrip supply substantially for the foreseeable future.
Why Nobody Saw It Coming, and Nobody Fixed It
Memory is the most violent boom and bust business in electronics. After pandemic hoarding, prices collapsed in 2022 and 2023, and Samsung cut production by 50 percent to stop the bleeding. Burned makers invested little in new capacity through 2024 and most of 2025.
Then demand detonated. Nearly 2,000 new data centers are planned or under construction against about 9,000 existing, a jump of roughly 20 percent. McKinsey predicts 7 trillion dollars of data center spending by 2030. Nvidia's data center revenue rose from barely a billion dollars in late 2019 to 51 billion dollars in the quarter that ended October 2025.
And you cannot just build your way out. A modern fab costs 15 billion dollars or more and takes 18 months or more to get running, so new capacity lands long after the surge.
The Bill Is Already on Your Shelf
| Signal | What was reported |
|---|---|
| DRAM prices in 2025 | Reported up roughly 170 percent |
| Early 2026 | Counterpoint: DRAM up 80 to 90 percent in a single quarter |
| Third quarter 2026 | TrendForce: PC DRAM contracts up 15 to 20 percent, server DRAM up 13 to 18 percent |
| Fourth quarter 2026 | TrendForce: PC DRAM up 3 to 8 percent, a slower climb |
| Consumer brands | Micron exited its Crucial consumer line |
| Device prices | Apple raised MacBook and iPad prices; Gartner projects PCs up 17 percent, phones up 13 percent versus 2025 |
Note the quiet detail in the forecasts: TrendForce says consumer price tolerance has reached its limit and suppliers' pricing power is weakening in some segments. Prices are still rising, just more slowly. That is not relief. It is customers running out of room to pay.
The most exposed buyers are at the bottom. Gartner has projected that rising memory costs could make entry level laptops under 500 dollars financially unviable within two years. For students and first time buyers, in India and everywhere else, the cheapest machines carry the thinnest margins and have the least room to absorb a memory price shock.
When Does It End?
| When | New memory capacity |
|---|---|
| 2027 | Micron HBM fab in Singapore; SK Hynix HBM fab in Cheongju; Micron retooled Taiwan fab from the second half |
| 2028 | Samsung's new Pyeongtaek plant; SK Hynix Indiana facilities by year end |
| 2030 | Micron's New York DRAM complex at full production |
Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan said at an AI summit in February that there is no relief until 2028, and an internal SK Hynix analysis reportedly points to at least 2028 as well. Economist Mina Kim adds the sting: prices fall much more slowly and reluctantly than they rise.
Worse, the technology may deepen the problem. The HBM4 standard allows 16 stacked dies, up from 12 today, which means each AI chip can swallow even more silicon.
What a Smart Buyer Does Now
- Buy for the memory you will actually use, not the number on the sticker.
- Prefer machines with upgradable RAM slots, so you can add memory later when prices fall.
- Consider refurbished or last generation hardware, which often carries more memory per dollar.
- Remember that software matters too. Lean apps and browsers stretch whatever memory you own.
The Verdict
We talk about the cost of AI in electricity and water. Add a third bill: silicon. Every layer in an HBM tower is a layer your phone or laptop did not get. The shortage is not a glitch. It is a market doing exactly what markets do when the richest buyers in history show up at a factory built for everyone else. Know where the memory went, and you will know why your next gadget costs more.
- HBM stacks up to 12 DRAM dies, costs about 3 times more, and is first in line for supply.
- Makers are shifting capacity to AI memory, squeezing phones, laptops and consoles.
- Prices are still rising in late 2026, though more slowly.
- Meaningful relief is not expected before 2028, and prices may fall slowly even then.
References
- Samuel K. Moore, How and When the Memory Chip Shortage Will End, IEEE Spectrum, February 2026.
- CNBC, Rise in memory chip costs puts pressure on retailers of laptops and smartphones, 26 June 2026.
- TrendForce, memory price forecasts for the third and fourth quarters of 2026, as reported by trade press.
- IDC, Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis and the Potential Impact on the Smartphone and PC Markets in 2026.
- Counterpoint Research, memory price surge analysis, quoted by IEEE Spectrum.
- Notebookcheck, reporting on DRAM contract prices and SK Hynix shortage analysis.
- Wikipedia, 2025 to present global memory supply shortage, for the summary of Gartner projections and Micron's Crucial exit.
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