For the last 18 months, RAM prices have surged, and analysts expect the trend to continue through the year. What was once a cheap commodity is now a luxury item, driving up costs for phones, PCs and tablets.

RAM sits between the CPU and storage, keeping data ready for processing. The main suppliers—Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron—operate massive plants that take years and billions of dollars to build. The technology, mainly DDR for PCs and LPDDR for mobile, has also seen the rise of HBM, which consumes triple the wafer supply of consumer DDR5.

Price data from PCPart Picker shows a 16GB DDR5‑4800 stick climbing from under $100 to over $400, while 32GB of DDR5‑6000 moved from $250 to more than $1,200—about the price of a MacBook Air. The culprit is AI: companies like OpenAI and AMD have purchased large swaths of supply, citing “existential” computing needs.

Manufacturers warn that shortages could last until 2030. Building new fabs is expensive and slow; SK Hynix plans two new plants to start in June 2029, while Micron’s Boise facility already uses a class‑one clean room.