The explosive demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has driven the arrival of a "super cycle" in the memory chip market, triggering a widespread shortage and price increase. At present, the validity period of some original manufacturers' quotations for memory is short, resulting in a phenomenon of "changing prices every day". Some DRAM and Flash production lines have even suspended quotations. Analysts predict that the overall price of DRAM (including high-frequency bandwidth memory HBM) will increase by 13% to 18% quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter.
The Caixin Media reported that the upward trend of the memory chip market in the first half of 2025 did not slow down in the fourth quarter; instead, signs of intensification emerged. The explosive growth of AI demand represented by HBM is completely disrupting the traditional balance between supply and demand in the memory industry.
The report quoted a person from a mainland module factory as saying that since the first quarter of this year, the original factory price of DDR4 has continued to rise. Data from the shopping guide platform "Manmanmai" shows that the price of a Kingston DDR4 desktop memory has risen sharply since March and is now more than twice that of the same period last year.
The latest quotations in the CFM flash memory market show that the costs in the upstream of the industry have risen sharply. The spot quotation of DDR4 16Gb 3200 reached $13 this week, surging by 30% compared with last week. Since October, the price of 512Gb Flash wafers has risen by more than 20% cumulatively.
TrendForce analyst Hsu Chia-yuan pointed out that the wafer capacity consumed by HBM is more than three times that of standard DRAM. Under the circumstances of limited total production capacity, original manufacturers will prioritize the production of Server DRAM and HBM, while memory giants will also shift their production focus to the more profitable HBM and DDR5.
The range of product price hikes has spread from HBM, where demand has soared, to the entire memory market. As original equipment manufacturers prioritize the transfer of production capacity to popular high-value products, the supply of traditional consumer electronics' old process products such as DDR4 and LPDDR4X has been squeezed, facing a "planned sacrifice" supply shortage. It is expected that the shortage of DDR4 will continue until the first half of 2026.
IDC predicts that the annual growth rate of AI servers will still reach 50% in 2028. Coupled with the fact that the domestic supply chain's autonomy rate exceeds 60% (silicon wafers and etching equipment have achieved domestic substitution), the price increase trend is not a short-term speculation. Although there may be an oversupply of HBM3e in 2026, high-end products such as HBM4 will still be in short supply. Companies like Seteng Co., Ltd. and AMEC, which master advanced packaging technologies, have seized the opportunity. This price increase wave ignited by AI is becoming a golden window for domestic memory chips to break the monopoly. In addition, the price increase demands from international original equipment manufacturers (Oems) have been passed on to mainland wafer fabrication plants. The report quoted a person from a major mainland memory manufacturer as saying that the price hikes by foreign Oems have led some domestic mainland manufacturers to turn to domestic wafer fabrication plants. Against this backdrop, it has become a consensus in the industry that the profits of original manufacturers have significantly expanded. For mainland manufacturers, module factories have been actively stockpiling chips and wafers. The domestic memory industry chain is attempting to embrace this new era of structural prosperity by actively stocking up and raising prices.
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