With 1 kilogram of Korea-made DRAM, you can now buy 620 grams of gold. The DRAM export unit price has risen 12.5 times from its low 3 years and 7 months ago. Gold, whose price has also surged recently on falling U.S. Government Bonds yields and a weaker dollar, climbed 2.4 times over the same period, but it still trailed DRAM's gains. The current export unit price per kilogram of DRAM is 1.53 times the price of the same weight of platinum and 41.7 times that of silver.
Prices have climbed to unprecedented levels, but some say the memory shortage could get even worse next year. Global investment bank (IB) Goldman Sachs expects the DRAM supply shortfall to widen from 5.0% this year to 5.9% next year. Compared with its previous outlook, that is up 0.1 percentage point (P) for this year and 3.4 percentage points for next year. The analysis is that high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for artificial intelligence (AI) servers and high-capacity server DRAM are absorbing limited production capacity, tightening supply even for commodity DRAM.
According to the Korea Trade Statistics Promotion Institute (TRASS) on the 26th, the export unit price of DRAM (excluding DRAM modules) from the 1st to the 20th of this month was $92,183 per kilogram (about 127.4 million won), up 401.0% from a year earlier, while exports in the same period rose 504.8% to $9,806.62 million (about 13.56 trillion won). Data from investment research firm Citrini Research analyzing Korea's DRAM export statistics show that the current DRAM export unit price has jumped about 12.5 times compared with January 2023, when it fell to about $7,400 per kilogram (about 10.2 million won).
◇ "Even considering a doubling of mainstream DRAM capacity, prices are rising steeply"
DRAM cannot be valued by weight alone like raw materials such as gold or silver. DRAM prices vary widely depending on product generation, data transfer speed, storage capacity, and other performance factors. As processes become finer and integration advances, the amount of data that can be packed into similarly sized chips has increased.
Compared with early 2023, when export unit prices hit bottom, today's mainstream products also have larger storage capacity. At that time, market research firm TrendForce was tracking DDR4 8Gb (gigabit) as the mainstream product in the spot market. The products TrendForce now uses as the benchmark for "mainstream DRAM spot prices" are DDR5 16Gb (2G×8) 4800 and 5600. The capacity contained in a representative product has doubled from 8Gb (1GB) to 16Gb (2GB).
However, some say the recent rise in DRAM export unit prices is hard to explain by product upgrades alone. A semiconductor industry official said, "As processes become finer and integration advances, more data can be packed into similarly sized chips, so product upgrades themselves have the effect of raising value per weight," but added, "It is hard to compare storage capacity per weight exactly between 3–4 years ago and now, but even accounting for that, the recent rise in memory prices is steep."
According to the Bank of Korea, DRAM export prices in July jumped 270.3% from a year earlier. U.S. Micron also said its fiscal year 2026 third-quarter average selling price (ASP) for DRAM rose by the low 60% range from the prior quarter.
◇ Prices are soaring, but the supply shortage will worsen next year
Global IBs and memory makers say the DRAM shortage will be hard to resolve quickly. Goldman Sachs projected that supply-demand conditions will be tighter next year than this year and that shortages will persist into 2028.
A surge in HBM demand is cited as the cause of the memory shortage. Goldman Sachs expects the global HBM market next year to grow 108% from this year. As demand for AI accelerators rises quickly, the DRAM production capacity that memory companies must allocate to HBM is growing alongside it.
HBM is made by stacking multiple DRAM chips and requires more wafer production capacity to produce the same capacity than commodity DRAM. The more production shifts to HBM for AI accelerators, the less capacity remains for DRAM for PCs, smartphones, and general servers.
TrendForce expects HBM to account for 30% of total DRAM wafer input by the top three players—Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron—by the end of next year, while its share of bit supply will be only 13%. Even with significant capacity投入, the actual increase in bits supplied is relatively small.
Memory companies are expanding capacity, but it takes time for new plants to translate into actual supply increases. TrendForce said that because it takes time to ramp new fabs and stabilize processes, and because demand for HBM and server DRAM continues to rise, supply will likely struggle to keep up with demand next year as well.
Memory manufacturers' outlooks are similar. In June, Micron said that tight supply of DRAM and NAND flash driven by AI-related demand and structural supply constraints will continue beyond 2027. SK hynix President Kwak Noh-jung also said last month that from the supply side, 2027 could be the worst shortage year in the memory industry's history.
A semiconductor industry official said, "As the memory shortage worsens, Nvidia and some cloud service providers (CSPs) are even reviewing options to adjust the HBM configuration or the amount installed in next-generation AI accelerators," adding, "Going forward, the duration of the shortage will hinge on how much HBM capacity expansion constrains commodity DRAM supply, when new capacity actually translates into shipments, and whether high prices curb demand."