Although the price of SSDs is already skyrocketing today, the situation is set to worsen. The three manufacturers responsible for the memory that SSDs are made of will double their prices.
Samsung and SK Hynix are not only in control of the production of RAM memory. NAND memory, which SSDs are made of, is also built in factories of these two specialists. They all indicate that they will double the price in the near future.
Triple the double
Samsung is aiming for more than a doubling and plans to implement the price change of its NAND memory in the first quarter of 2026, according to Digitimes. SK Hynix is increasing prices by the same amount. Sandisk is the third player active in the production of NAND flash and that company does not intend to make an exception. In the course of 2026, Sandisk will increase prices by one hundred percent.
This indicates that the three main manufacturers of SSD memory will adjust their prices in roughly the same way. The culprit is the same as with the DRAM shortage: AI. To feed the superclusters of AI servers in data centers of Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Google and other parties, these parties need huge amounts of SSD memory. AI weighs so heavily on demand that supply cannot keep up, so the price rises.
Micron also builds NAND. That company mainly plays a major role in the production of RAM, but also manufactures SSD memory. Micron recently announced that it will build a new factory in Singapore, with the aim of expanding NAND production capacity. Such investments will not help in the short term: the factory will be ready in the second half of 2028 at the earliest.
Impact
It remains to be seen what the impact will be on the actual price of SSDs and PCs. That has already skyrocketed before this announcement. Whether that was in anticipation of the higher costs, or a harbinger of what is to come, will only become clear in the coming weeks and months.
In any case, the trend continues: the insatiable hunger of a handful of big players with deep pockets in the AI world weighs on the entire IT sector worldwide, which has to swallow considerably higher prices for basic components. In this way, the promised efficiency gains for AI are already being preventively compensated, at least in part, by higher prices for all ordinary IT.