UBS has dramatically hiked its memory chip price forecasts, projecting that DRAM and NAND contract prices will surge far more aggressively than previously anticipated, driven by artificial intelligence demand.
The investment bank now expects DDR prices to climb 32% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2026 and 18% in Q4 2026. Those figures are up sharply from earlier estimates of 17% and 12%, respectively. On the NAND side, UBS lifted its projections to 30% QoQ growth in Q3 2026 and 12% in Q4 2026.
The AI memory vacuum
The explosion of hyperscale data centers and AI server deployments has fundamentally reshuffled how semiconductor manufacturers allocate their wafer production. Capacity that once went toward traditional DRAM and NAND is increasingly being redirected to high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips that power AI accelerators and training clusters.
That reallocation is creating a supply squeeze across the broader memory market. UBS projects DRAM demand will increase by 36.2% in 2027, while supply will grow at only 19.3%.
