Semiconductors

If it feels these days as if everything in technology is about AI, that's because it is. And nowhere is that more true than in the market for computer memory. Demand, and profitability, for the type of DRAM used to feed GPUs and other accelerators in AI data centers is so huge that it's diverting memory away from the supply needed for other uses and causing prices to skyrocket. According to Counter-point Research, DRAM prices rose at least 80 to 90 percent in the first quarter of 2026. • The largest AI hardware companies are likely first in line for new memory, but that leaves everybody else—makers of PCs, smartphones, TVs, and everything else that needs to temporarily store billions of bits—scrambling to deal with scarce supply and inflated prices. • How did the electronics industry get into this mess, and even more important, how will it get out? IEEE Spectrum asked economists and memory experts to explain. Today's situation, they say, is the result of a collision between the DRAM industry's historic boom-and-bust cycle and an AI hardware infrastructure build-out that's without precedent in its scale. And, barring some major collapse in the AI sector, it will take years for new capacity and new technology to bring supply in line with demand. Even then, prices might stay high. • To understand both the supply and the demand ends of this episode, you need to understand its main culprit: high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. Illustration by George Wylesol