According to market research firm Yole Group, the ongoing demand from AI data centers for server DRAM will continue to affect the market in 2026, following on from increasing demand at the end of 2025, with Q4 results revealing prices have jumped “more than 30%” during the quarter. The firm suggests shortages “could persist until 2027”, and the same can be said for inflated prices.

Several months have passed since a sudden spike in DRAM prices, fueled by AI demand, caused a noticeable effect on the market. Not just enterprise, but consumer markets are heavily affected, too. DDR5 RAM in particular has seen massive price hikes; GPUs are also being disrupted by the memory shortages, with an up to 20% increase, especially on 16GB+ VRAM cards.

DRAM demand is still rising in 2026

Korean publication ETNews points towards a forecast from Yole Group that suggests DRAM demand is expected to increase by 23% during 2026, based on year-on-year growth. Not only is this growth driven by AI infrastructure for the fast-growing AI data center industry – OpenAI’s $100bn deal with Nvidia springs to mind – but also by an increase in “on-device AI” technology found in all kinds of devices, from smartphones to automobiles.

Interestingly, it’s the latter technologies said to be taking up much of the memory supply in 2026. The report forecasts just 3% of increase for data centers this year, while demand in smartphones and PCs is up 16% and 15%, respectively. The former seems to make sense given recent news surrounding Apple’s next big push for AI, making Siri a “fully-fledged” AI chatbot.

“If you are a company that wants to build new smartphones or PCs, you need DRAM to put in your devices. And if you see that a lot of capacity is being shifted to supply server demand, you become concerned about the availability of your own supply, and you try to buy more than you need. It’s psychological. This fear of scarcity tomorrow is driving the price movements of today.“

John Lorenz – Director, Memory & Computing at Yole Group

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.