Think the RAM Crisis Is Bad Now? It Just Keeps Getting Worse

Unless the AI bubble bursts and sends all those planned data center projects packing, you won’t see an end to memory pricing woes anytime soon. One of the big three semiconductor companies capable of making memory doesn’t imagine it will be able to meet all consumer demand for at least another four years. The DRAM and NAND memory market is dominated by three major players, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix. The latter falls under the global conglomerate SK Group. The South Korean-based RAM maker’s chairman, Chey Tae-won, told Bloomberg that the company is expanding memory-making capacity. Unfortunately, it won’t be able to meet demand until “around” 2030. Chey spoke to reporters outside of GTC 2026 earlier this week. He said that capacity for the basic wafers the company uses for its chips is lagging 20% behind demand. All this inevitably trickles down to consumers. We’ve seen prices increase for practically every gadget, from laptops to smartphones like the recent Samsung Galaxy S26, all the way down to enthusiast-level miniature computing chips like the Raspberry Pi. The blame for the memory shortage falls at the feet of the AI boom. The largest AI datacenter projects, like OpenAI’s