The businesses that make RAM and flash reminiscence chips are enjoying record profits due to the AI-induced reminiscence crunch—they usually’re additionally indicating that they don’t anticipate situations to enhance a lot if in any respect in 2026. And whereas RAM kits have been hit the quickest and hardest by shortages and value will increase, we shouldn’t anticipate SSD pricing to enhance any time quickly, both.
That’s the message from Shunsuke Nakato (via PC Gamer), managing director of the reminiscence division of Kioxia, the Japanese reminiscence firm that was spun off from Toshiba on the finish of the 2010s. Nakato says that Kioxia’s manufacturing capability is offered out by means of the remainder of 2026, driving the marketplace for each enterprise and shopper SSDs to a “high-end and costly part.”
“There’s a sense of disaster that firms can be eradicated the second they cease investing in AI, in order that they haven’t any alternative however to proceed investing,” stated Nakato, as reported by the Korean-language publication Digital Every day. Absent a giant change within the demand for generative AI information facilities, that cycle of investments will preserve costs excessive for the foreseeable future.
Nakato did observe that Kioxia was making an attempt to extend its manufacturing capability to satisfy the elevated demand, saying that it was taking steps to enhance yields at its manufacturing facility in Yokkaichi and that Kioxia anticipated one other manufacturing facility in Kitakami to start “full-scale mass manufacturing” this yr.
As we’ve seen throughout a number of chip shortages this decade, it takes time for chip shortages to abate as a result of it takes years to construct new factories and get them producing helpful numbers of usable chips. Corporations are additionally generally cautious about including new capability too shortly, lest market situations change within the interim and go away them with piles of expensive memory that they have to discount heavily to sell.
