Micron says memory shortage will ‘persist’ beyond 2026

Dec 18, 2025 10:14 PM - 5 months ago 154628

Emma Roth

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, user tech, crypto, societal media, and overmuch more. Previously, she was a writer and editor astatine MUO.

Micron, 1 of the 3 biggest representation suppliers successful the world, forecasts unsmooth months up for the world RAM supply. As part of its net report released connected Wednesday, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said “tight manufacture conditions” crossed DRAM and NAND flash representation are expected to “persist done and beyond” 2026 arsenic AI drives up demand.

With the AI roar successful afloat swing, Micron is making much money than ever arsenic companies for illustration OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and Google capable their information centers pinch powerful chips that travel packaged pinch high-bandwidth representation (HBM). It erstwhile again reported grounds gross of $13.64 cardinal this past quarter, a sizeable jump from the $8.71 cardinal it made astatine the aforesaid clip past year.

Micron conscionable shuttered its consumer-facing business, Crucial, arsenic it prioritizes acold much lucrative deals involving HBM technology, which uses three times the silicon wafers compared to modular DRAM. That leaves less resources for the DRAM successful products we usage each day, for illustration PCs, smartphones, smart TVs, and moreover cars. It has already started driving up prices of DDR5 RAM kits, pinch other devices expected to beryllium impacted soon.

“Over the past fewer months, our customers’ AI information halfway build-out plans person driven a crisp summation successful request forecast for representation and storage,” Mehrotra said during the net call, adding that “supply will stay substantially short of the request for the foreseeable future.” Micron said successful its net study that these “memory proviso constraints” whitethorn impact PC shipments adjacent year.

Micron intends to ramp up accumulation and expects to summation its shipments of DRAM and NAND flash representation by 20 percent adjacent year, but that still isn’t capable to support up. “Despite important efforts, we are disappointed to beryllium incapable to meet request from different customers crossed each marketplace segments,” Mehrotra said. Micron besides expects to commencement accumulation astatine a caller manufacturing installation successful Idaho successful 2027, followed by a caller works successful New York successful 2030.

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