Not that critics of data center expansion needed another reason to oppose those facilities in their backyards, but they have one: the memory chip shortage.
As fabricators reallocate their resources to meet the demands of the AI industry, the big losers will be consumers, as the prices of the gadgets they love soar.
"AI servers need enormous amounts of memory, and the three makers that supply the world, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, are reallocating wafer capacity to high-bandwidth memory for AI chips because it is far more profitable and effectively sold out," explained Jeff Barrington, managing director of Windsor Drake, an investment banking and M&A advisory firm in Toronto.
"That starves consumer-grade DRAM and NAND, and the prices show it," he told TechNewsWorld. "Contract DRAM jumped about 90% in the first quarter and another 60% in the second, after rising 172% across 2025."
Data centers sit at the center of the shortage because AI servers are memory monsters, explained Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for EMEA and devices at IDC, a market research company in Framingham, Mass.
