#dram-shortage

#dram-shortage

Since the start of 2026, Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and a dozen other major corporations have signaled that the shortage of DRAM, or dynamic random access memory - the fundamental building block of almost all technology - will constrain production. Cook warned it will compress iPhone margins. Micron Technology Inc. called the bottleneck "unprecedented." Musk got to the intractable nature o f the problem when he declared Tesla is going to have to build its own memory fabrication plant.

But he quickly turned pessimistic by warning "In the coming quarters, the handset industry will be constrained by the availability and pricing of memory, particularly DRAM." Those constraints, he said, stem entirely from memory-makers prioritizing memory for AI datacenters and reducing the amount of other memory they make. The laws of supply and demand have kicked in, sending the price of DRAM soaring.

In 2025, the three biggest stock gainers in the S&P 500 were Micron ( NASDAQ:MU) with around 250%, Western Digital ( NASDAQ:WDC) with almost 300%, and Sandisk ( NASDAQ:SNDK) with nearly 600%. To be more precise, SNDK stock gained approximately 580% last year, which is astounding no matter how you slice it. And in case you didn't see the connection, the three top performers are all involved in the market for memory-storage hardware.

When I asked him how bad things really were, Clarke looked at me with a sigh. "Look, I've been at this a long time. This is the worst shortage I've ever seen. Demand is way ahead of supply. And it's driven by AI. It's driven by infrastructure. You've seen the spot market price-it's up to five times from September. That will manifest. It already has in contract pricing."

Starting December 17, the computer maker is set to hike prices across its commercial product lines, according to an internal list of upcoming price changes sent to staff on December 9 and seen by Business Insider. The list outlines price hikes for Dell'scommercial business - meaning its sales to corporate clients rather than individual consumers. The commercial business accounts for about 85% of Dell's annual revenue in the Client Solutions Group (CSG), the division that sells laptops and PCs, according to its latest annual results.

DRAM contract prices have increased 171 percent year over year, according to industry data. Gerry Chen, general manager of memory manufacturer TeamGroup, warned that the situation will worsen in the first half of 2026 once distributors exhaust their remaining inventory. He expects supply constraints to persist through late 2027 or beyond.