Key findings
- The three largest memory makers expect the memory shortage to last into 2028 or beyond.
- Price forecasts point earlier. Gartner said in March that prices may stabilize by early 2027, and Citi expects a peak in the second quarter of 2027.
- So far, prices are easing only in the spot market for older DDR4 chips and in used modules. Contract prices are still rising.
- The biggest risk to the forecasts is AI spending, which is still growing but is increasingly paid for with borrowed money. When will the memory shortage end? It is probably one of the questions the industry asks most often, and over the past year the memory makers' answer has moved further out. In July 2026, SK hynix's CEO said 2027 will be "the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective" and that demand would exceed supply "even beyond 2030." The same month, Samsung said the shortage will persist through 2028.
But not everyone agrees. In September, Acer's CEO said memory makers talk up distant end dates to protect their margins, and that memory and SSD supplies are already ample.
Part of the reason the forecasts differ is that they measure different things. Most forecast how long memory supply will stay tight. A smaller group forecasts when prices will peak or fall, and those point to earlier dates.
Memory shortage forecasts, side by side
The tables below collect 20 public forecasts made between October 2025 and September 2026. The "Covers" column shows which memory each one refers to, because HBM, server DRAM, consumer DRAM and NAND flash are moving at different speeds.
Supply forecasts: how long supply stays tight
| Who (what they sell), when | Covers | Forecast |
|---|---|---|
| Phison CEO (SSD controllers), Oct 2025 | NAND | "Tight for the next ten years" |
| SK hynix (memory maker), Oct 2025 | HBM | Tight into 2027 |
| Micron (memory maker), Dec 2025 | DRAM and NAND | Constraints "persist beyond calendar 2026" |
| Samsung (memory maker), Jan 2026 | All memory | Supply growth limited in 2026 and 2027 |
| SK Group chairman (memory maker's parent), Mar 2026 | All memory | Shortages for "another four to five years" |
| Former head of Samsung's chip business (retired), May 2026 | All memory | Market could turn as supply surges in late 2027 or early 2028 |
| Goldman Sachs (bank), Jun 2026 | DRAM, NAND and HBM | Shortages "extend into 2028" |
| IDC (research firm), Jun 2026 | Memory for PCs and phones | No relief "before the end of 2027" |
| Micron (memory maker), Jun 2026 | DRAM and NAND | Tight "beyond calendar 2027," improving "gradually in 2028" |
| SK hynix CEO (memory maker), Jul 2026 | All memory | 2027 the worst year; demand above supply beyond 2030 |
| ADATA chairman (memory modules), Jul 2026 | DRAM | Shortage for "another 10 years" |
| TrendForce (research firm), Jul 2026 | NAND vs DRAM | NAND supply catches up with demand in 2027; DRAM gap widens |
| Samsung (memory maker), Jul 2026 | All memory | Worse in 2027 than 2026, lasting through 2028 |
| Nvidia CFO (memory buyer), Aug 2026 | All supply, not memory only | A bottleneck "at least through the end of fiscal year 2028", which ends January 2028 |
| KB Securities (Korean brokerage), Sep 2026 | DRAM and NAND | "The tightest supply conditions in history" in 2027 |
| Acer CEO (PC maker, memory buyer), Sep 2026 | Memory and SSDs | Shortage already over |
Price forecasts: when prices peak or fall
| Who (what they sell), when | Covers | Forecast |
|---|---|---|
| Gartner (research firm), Mar 2026 | Memory prices | May stabilize by 1Q27, with a small decline in 2H27 |
| AMD (CPUs and GPUs), Jun 2026 | DDR5 prices | Back to normal in "about another two years" |
| Citi (bank), Jul 2026 | DRAM and NAND prices | Peak in 2Q27, then edge down |
| TrendForce (research firm), Jul 2026 | Server DRAM contract prices | Rising each quarter through 2H27, by smaller amounts |
The three largest memory makers all point to 2028 or later. Only three voices in the supply table expect an earlier end: a former head of Samsung's chip business, TrendForce for NAND only, and Acer. Most price forecasts point to 2027, with DDR5 returning to normal around 2028. Server DRAM is the exception, with contract prices expected to rise every quarter through the second half of 2027.
The makers have also pushed their own end dates later over the past year. Samsung moved from 2027 to 2028, and Micron from "beyond calendar 2026" to "beyond calendar 2027." Demand may keep running ahead of their plans, or a longer shortage may simply give them a stronger hand in contract talks. The dates alone don't show which.
Why new supply arrives slowly
If memory is this scarce, why don't the makers simply build more? They are, but two things slow the arrival of new supply. The first is HBM, the stacked memory used in AI accelerators. According to Micron, HBM3E needs roughly three times the wafer area of DDR5 to deliver the same capacity, so every wafer shifted to AI memory takes a larger share of the industry's output.
The second is time. A modern memory fab typically takes three to five years from groundbreaking to high-volume production. The fabs already announced come online in a wave: Micron's first Idaho fab starts output in mid-2027, SK hynix's Yongin cleanroom is ready in February 2027, and further fabs follow through 2030. China's CXMT is also expanding, although China's own AI build-out may absorb much of that output through 2027.
These timelines support the makers' 2028 date. They also set up a possible glut later, because every one of these fabs was planned during a shortage.
The first signs of easing
Contract price increases shrank through most of 2026. Conventional DRAM contract prices, the negotiated prices large buyers pay, rose roughly 93–98% in the first quarter, and TrendForce forecast 13–18% for the third quarter.
The fourth quarter breaks that pattern for NAND and possibly for DRAM. TrendForce now expects NAND contract prices to rise 15–20%, faster than in the third quarter. It has also raised its fourth-quarter DRAM outlook, with PC and server DRAM leading the gains.
Where prices are easing, it is in the spot market for older DDR4 chips and in used modules. A 16-gigabit DDR4 chip fell about 9% on the spot market during September, to $83.78. DDR4 is being phased out, however, so its spot market is thin and its prices are a noisy signal. That spot price is also still roughly 75% above the July contract price of $48. A real turn would show two things: spot prices falling to contract levels, and contract increases dropping to zero. Neither has happened yet.
Long-term contracts will also slow price declines when they come. Samsung plans to sell 60–70% of its capacity under long-term contracts, reportedly with price floors. When prices fall, spot buyers and customers without contracts will see the drop first, which is the two-tier pricing pattern long-term contracts have created in server DRAM.
What could make the forecasts wrong
The biggest risk to these forecasts is AI spending. If it slows, for example because the AI boom turns out to be a bubble, demand would weaken just as the new fabs come online. The shortage could then end sooner, possibly in a glut like the one in 2019, when SK hynix's operating profit fell 87%.
So far the spending is still growing. Moody's projected in May that hyperscaler capital spending would reach $785 billion this year and close in on $1 trillion in 2027. Part of that growth is memory itself, since TrendForce estimates DRAM and NAND at 47% of major cloud providers' capital spending in 2026 and 68% in 2027. A flat budget in 2027 could simply reflect cheaper memory.
The concern is how that spending is paid for. Alphabet and Amazon now spend more than their operations bring in, and by late July Goldman had counted $489 billion of AI-related bond and loan issuance this year, well above its estimate for all of 2025. OpenAI had an operating loss of about $20.9 billion on $13.1 billion of revenue in 2025.
Demand, however, still looks strong. Microsoft said demand "continues to exceed available supply," and Oracle reported 97.9% utilization of its GPU fleet, with four-year-old GPUs re-leased at a 20% premium. On balance, the evidence today points to continued spending, with financing as the main risk to watch.
Three ways this could play out
- AI spending keeps climbing. New fabs are absorbed as they open, and the shortage lasts through 2028, as Samsung and Micron expect.
- AI spending slows as new fabs open. Budgets flatten in 2027 or 2028 just as new capacity arrives, repeating the 2019 pattern.
- Older and consumer memory eases first. Weak phone and PC demand and new Chinese capacity push down DDR4 and consumer DRAM, while server DRAM and HBM stay tight. Today's data fits the third path only for DDR4 in the spot and used markets. Contract prices fit the first path.
What it means for buyers and sellers of hardware
TrendForce expects server DRAM contract prices to keep rising through the second half of 2027, so delaying a server memory purchase is a bet against that forecast. Waiting can make sense for an upgrade that can move into 2028. For a refresh needed within the next few quarters, there is little to gain by waiting.
For anyone holding decommissioned hardware or planning to sell used RAM, the softer DDR4 spot market is a reason to watch secondary-market quotes closely, though server memory as a whole has not turned yet. Anyone planning to sell server memory from a refresh should compare quotes over time.
The next data point arrives on September 30, when Micron reports its fiscal fourth-quarter results and gives its first outlook for fiscal 2027. If Micron repeats that supply will "remain tight beyond calendar 2027," the long-shortage view holds for another quarter. If it signals flat prices, the forecasters expecting a 2027 turn will have their first hard evidence.
The full version of this report has the fab timeline, the AI-spending figures and all sources.
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