The AI gold rush has found its way into your wallet. Apple and Microsoft both announced substantial price hikes on consumer products in late June 2026, driven by memory and storage chip costs that have quadrupled since 2025.
Apple raised prices on select MacBooks and iPads by up to $300, representing increases of roughly 18-25% on affected models. Microsoft followed by announcing Xbox console price increases of $100 to $150, set to take effect August 1, 2026.
Why your gadgets are getting expensive
Major tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon, have been aggressively scaling their data center spending since 2025. That demand has created a gravitational pull on the global chip supply that consumer electronics simply can’t compete with.
Memory chip manufacturers have responded to the AI frenzy by pivoting production toward high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the specialized chips that power AI servers. The result: consumer-grade DRAM and NAND flash, the memory and storage chips found in laptops, tablets, and game consoles, are now in constrained supply. Prices have quadrupled.
