RAM prices now expected to jump another 40% to 50% as a lawsuit accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of turning scarcity into market power.
Jefferies Research was told by memory consultant Ethan Tan that prices may rise 40% to 50% in Q3-26, then 30% to 40% in Q4-26, with relief unlikely before 2028.
DRAM feeds active computation, NAND feeds storage, so AI servers, laptops, phones, and consoles compete for the same scarce factory base.
HBM, stacked DRAM for AI accelerators, carries higher margins than consumer RAM, so manufacturers can shift capacity away from PCs without opening a new fab.
The California complaint says the 3 firms control about 90% of global DRAM and coordinated a move toward HBM while choking DDR3 and DDR4 supply.
The legal test will be proof of agreement, since the prior DRAM class action failed when judges saw parallel conduct rather than an illegal deal.
The industry history makes the allegation harder to shrug off, because DOJ said Samsung paid $300M and Hynix paid $185M in earlier DRAM price-fixing cases.
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techspot. com/news/112934-ram-prices-expected-rise-another-40-50-q3.html
Bloomberg chart showing just how much RAM datacenter GPUs take.
Nvidia’s H100 carried 80GB of GPU memory, H200 moved to 141GB, Blackwell moved to 192GB class parts, and GB300 Blackwell Ultra reaches 288GB of HBM3e per GPU.
A 72-GPU rack multiplies that into a memory wall big enough to change supplier behavior, because AI servers pay premium prices for capacity and bandwidth that make everyday device memory less attractive
