Micron CEO says memory supplies will only get tighter through 2028

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Micron chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra has warned that memory shortages are going to get worse before they get better. He said Micron sees demand exceeding supply in both 2027 and 2028, with greater tightness in those years than in 2026. Even more striking, he admitted the company does not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance. New factories coming online in 2028 will not fix the shortage straight away

The cause is the AI boom. Demand for high bandwidth memory, or HBM, used in AI accelerators is growing faster than demand for ordinary server memory. All the data centres we keep discussing need enormous amounts of memory, and chip makers cannot build new production lines quickly enough. Mehrotra said customers will pay much higher prices than they do this year

The financial numbers are eye watering. According to reports, Micron's annual revenue has jumped to $133.2 billion and net income rose to $85 billion. Gross margins are reportedly around 83 percent for HBM and 90 percent for data centre DRAM, which are extraordinary figures for a memory maker. Memory has historically been a boom and bust business, but right now it is very much boom. It is quite a turnaround from the slump a few years ago

The worry for ordinary consumers is what this means for PCs, laptops, phones and games consoles. If memory makers prioritise expensive AI chips, there is less capacity for consumer products and prices tend to rise. The report focused on data centres, but the knock on effects are hard to avoid when everyone is competing for the same factories. Gamers and PC builders are likely to feel it first

We have already seen memory prices push up the cost of some devices this year. Have you noticed RAM or SSD prices creeping up? And should we expect pricier laptops and phones as a result of the AI building spree?

Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028arstechnica.com