TL;DRGoogle confirms the Pixel 11 lineup will be more expensive due to a sixfold surge in RAM costs driven by AI data centre demand
Google has confirmed that its upcoming Pixel 11 phones will cost more than their predecessors, becoming the latest major phone maker to pass on the cost of a global memory shortage that has sent RAM prices to levels the industry has never seen. In an interview with 9to5Google published on Thursday, Shakil Barkat, Google’s vice president of devices and services, said the company had shielded consumers from supply fluctuations for as long as possible but that the economics have now fundamentally shifted. The entire Pixel family, including the Pixel Watch, will see price adjustments rolled out dynamically to match what Barkat called supply realities.
Barkat pointed to Morgan Stanley data showing that the cost of one gigabyte of RAM jumped from $2 and 80 cents in 2025 to $12 this year, a roughly sixfold increase. For a flagship phone shipping with 16 GB of RAM, that translates to a bill-of-materials jump from roughly $45 per handset to approximately $192, according to the bank’s analysis. The surge is driven by memory makers redirecting wafer capacity toward the high-bandwidth memory used in AI data centres, squeezing the supply available for consumer devices.
