SK Hynix’s CEO just handed Reuters a grim headline about memory shortage: 2027 could be memory’s worst year on record. That pain, he says, sticks around well past 2030. The company isn’t guessing here, either. It’s watching its own order books fill faster than its factories can expand. Here’s the full story, and why this bottleneck won’t fix itself fast. Plus what it means for your next phone or laptop.
Why AI Is Eating the World’s RAM
SK Hynix’s shares began trading on the Nasdaq on July 10, 2026. That same day, CEO Kwak Noh-jung dropped a grim line on Reuters. “We forecast that next year will be the worst year in the industry’s history,” he said. Here’s the uncomfortable part: demand isn’t slowing down anytime soon. SK Hynix already knows this. It’s locked in long-term deals with major customers, locking up supply years before anyone else gets a shot at it.
So what’s actually driving this? A chip called HBM — high bandwidth memory. Picture regular memory chips stacked on top of each other like a tiny skyscraper, wired straight into the AI chip next door. That’s what makes it so fast. Gigabit for gigabit, HBM also costs far more than everyday laptop DRAM. That’s why chipmakers keep prioritizing it.
That priority isn’t easy to reverse. Stacking a dozen or more memory layers means drilling thousands of microscopic connections through silicon. Yields drop the taller the stack gets. The memory is then fused to the AI chip through a packaging process called CoWoS, largely controlled by TSMC. It’s been sold out for over a year.
Samsung faces a similarly rough 2027, and together the two companies dominate most of the global DRAM market. Samsung has faced delays getting its HBM certified for Nvidia, leaving SK Hynix with an even stronger grip. Kwak’s warning echoes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who said last month AI memory shortages will continue for years. UBS expects DRAM to stay undersupplied until at least mid 2028.
The Numbers Behind the Warning
SK Hynix’s operating profit hit a record 47 trillion won, or about 31 billion dollars, in 2025. That’s double what it made the year before. Analysts see the same trend playing out industry-wide. TrendForce just raised its 2026 forecast for the combined DRAM and NAND market. The new number: 889.3 billion dollars, up from 551.6 billion. By 2027, it expects that figure to top 1.28 trillion. Investors have piled in too. Reuters reports SK Hynix shares are up more than sevenfold over the past year. That’s even with a recent pullback tied to AI spending worries.
What It Actually Means for Your Next Phone or Laptop
That squeeze already shows up in retail terms. Expect PC and phone makers to face higher component bills. TrendForce data shows DRAM contract prices already climbing sharply through 2026. Some of that cost will land on retail prices. Others will quietly cut RAM specs on cheaper models instead.
If you’re planning a laptop upgrade or a custom PC build soon, plan for higher costs. Notebook and desktop buyers are already seeing this play out. Memory is unlikely to get cheaper before it gets more expensive.
The Bigger Shift Nobody’s Pricing In
The AI story has mostly been about compute: bigger GPU clusters, faster chips, cheaper tokens. That race made intelligence feel abundant. The cost showed up in a data center’s electricity bill, not in your hands.
That DRAM dominance matters here. HBM and the DDR5 chip in your laptop aren’t separate products from separate factories. Both start on the same silicon wafer. HBM just gets stacked and packaged differently for AI servers. When SK Hynix and Samsung route more wafers toward HBM, fewer are left for everyone else. Ordinary consumer memory feels the pinch. That shared starting point connects a data center chip shortage to the price on your next phone.
So call it what it is: a memory shortage, not a compute shortage. SK Hynix’s CEO isn’t warning about a temporary parts problem. He’s describing a hard ceiling on how much AI the world can physically run. That ceiling is set by silicon wafers and packaging queues, not GPU count. Until that ceiling moves, expect memory to stay the scarcest thing in AI.
FAQs
Why is there a memory shortage in 2026?
AI data centers are absorbing most of the global DRAM and HBM supply. Expanding HBM production is slow due to complex stacking and packaging steps.
Will RAM prices keep rising?
Most signs point that way. Reuters and TrendForce both expect pricing pressure to continue through 2027 and possibly longer.
Which products will be hit hardest?
PCs, laptops, and smartphones will likely feel it first. They rely on the same DRAM that AI servers are now absorbing.
Is this shortage temporary?
Probably not. Kwak Noh-jung has said demand could outpace supply well beyond 2030. That points to a structural problem, not a short-term spike.
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