"A box of memory modules, worth as much as an apartment in Shanghai." By the end of 2025, this shocking comparison is no longer a metaphor but the reality of the global semiconductor market. From the "black gold bars" nickname in Huaqiangbei to "panic buying" by downstream manufacturers, a tiny memory module is becoming the core catalyst for a cost tsunami sweeping through the global technology industry chain.
This is far from an ordinary cyclical fluctuation; it's a profound and lasting industrial resource restructuring ignited by artificial intelligence (AI) computing power. Behind the soaring prices lies unprecedented supply-demand imbalance, extreme manufacturing complexity, and the ultimate test of underlying precision manufacturing capabilities.
Phenomenon: From Generic Commodity to Strategic Asset
The market frenzy is first reflected in prices. Industry data shows that since the second half of 2025, memory chip prices have continued to rise rapidly, with most categories increasing by more than 100%. Taking a 256GB DDR5 server memory module as an example, its unit price exceeded 40,000 yuan in early 2026, even approaching 60,000 yuan. If purchasing a hundred modules at once, the total cost indeed surpasses the value of housing in many cities.
Even more dramatic is the "price inversion": the previous-generation DDR4 memory, which should have been phased out, saw its spot prices temporarily exceed the more advanced DDR5 in 2025 due to drastically reduced production capacity. This clearly reveals a fundamental shift in global memory industry capacity allocation. Memory has evolved from a highly standardized generic commodity into a strategic scarce asset that determines the upper limit of AI computing power.
Drivers: Triple Squeeze Under the AI "Black Hole"
The catalyst driving this transformation is the seemingly bottomless demand for AI computing power.
Demand Side: The "Devouring Effect" of AI Servers
Training and running large models requires massive amounts of "working memory." A high-end AI server's memory capacity demand is 8 to 10 times that of traditional servers. As technology giants race to develop the next generation of AGI, their planned super data centers are engaging in "sweeping purchases." Market reports indicate that OpenAI's "Stargate" project alone has a potential monthly demand for memory chips equivalent to approximately 900,000 wafers, completely disrupting the supply-demand balance.
Supply Side: The "Great Migration" of Capacity
Facing high profits from AI applications, major manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have made decisive and consistent business decisions: redirecting their most advanced processes and capital expenditures toward higher-margin HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and server-grade DDR5. This directly results in severe compression of production capacity for general-purpose DRAM used in consumer electronics (PCs, smartphones). HBM production itself is complex with significant yield challenges, further constraining the global effective supply of memory.
Pricing Power: The Original Equipment Manufacturers' "Gross Margin Iron Curtain"
More crucially, the market pricing logic has been overturned. Facing certain shortages, the three major manufacturers have established a new pricing floor: locking gross margins at over 60%. This means prices are no longer entirely cost-driven but dominated by suppliers to ensure massive profits. This "gross margin-oriented" strategy has established a solid "floor" for memory prices.
Industry: A "Cost Tsunami" Affecting the Entire Chain
As the "lifeblood" of electronic systems, the shockwaves from soaring memory prices are rippling outward, evolving into a "tech inflation."
Consumer Electronics Under Pressure
Storage costs now account for 20% or more of the total material costs for laptop computers, up from the usual 10%-18%. Brands like Dell and HP have explicitly stated they will adjust product pricing. Smartphones are similarly under pressure, with their average selling prices expected to rise.
The "Panic Spiral" in Supply Chains
Facing shortage expectations, downstream cloud service providers, end-product manufacturers, and even large trading companies are joining the "rushing to buy" frenzy, engaging in "panic purchasing" to build inventory. This abnormal demand further amplifies shortages, creating a spiral of rising prices.
The Window of Opportunity for Domestic Substitution
Crisis also breeds opportunity. Domestic manufacturers represented by ChangXin Memory are accelerating technological iteration and capacity ramp-up. While they cannot fill the high-end HBM gap in the short term, domestic substitution has become a key hope for stabilizing supply chains in the vast mainstream market.
Essence: Precision Manufacturing as the "Invisible Pillar"
Looking at the big picture, the essence of "sky-high" memory prices is the concentrated manifestation of the semiconductor industry at the intersection of physical limits and economic laws. Whether it's the dozen-plus layers of chip stacking in HBM, micron-level silicon through-silicon vias interconnects, or the nanometer-level flatness required for ultra-thin wafers, each performance leap represents an extreme challenge to underlying precision manufacturing capabilities.
Among these, ultra-thin wafer processing can be called the "art of stress control." For stacking purposes, each chip must be thinned to below 100 microns. In this process, achieving global nanometer-level flatness and sub-micron thickness uniformity while eliminating processing damage and residual stress directly determines final product yield and reliability. This is far from simple "thinning" but rather a technological watershed that determines whether advanced chips can be successfully mass-produced.
Therefore, the memory story ultimately points to a core truth: in the semiconductor industry, the speed and height of top-level application innovation and market prosperity ultimately depend on the depth and breadth of underlying precision manufacturing capabilities. No matter how ingenious the design, value can only be truly realized when blueprints are transformed into mass-producible, high-performance, high-yield physical products.
Memory is the memory of the digital age. Its sky-high prices remember the AI frenzy's suction effect on global production capacity, remember the challenges of manufacturing processes approaching physical limits, and remember the unshakable value of precision manufacturing as the industry's cornerstone.
In the future, this efficiency-driven competition will not cease. As DDR6 technology is already on the horizon, requirements for manufacturing precision and complexity will only increase. For the entire industry chain, whoever can continuously overcome core bottlenecks in precision manufacturing, whoever can master new processes with better costs and higher yields, will hold the most critical chips in the competition of the digital age.