Executive Summary

• AI adoption, amongst other factors, has driven a global memory shortage. Its high demand for high-bandwidth memory has triggered a supply chain crisis, leaving RAM in short supply and everyone feeling the pinch.
• Some companies have diverted production away from DDR4 and DDR5 for everyday tech items such as laptops and phones, in favour of supplying data centres and meeting AI demands.
• These shortages have hiked prices, some have more than doubled in price, which is affecting data centres and consumers alike, and is set to continue to 2027.

In the words of the famous pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, “Where has all the RAM gone?” Or did he say rum? Never mind.

But seriously, where is the memory going? The global memory shortage intensifies as we head into the first month of 2026 and consumers and tech leaders alike are concerned about supply chain issues and price hikes.

Analysts predict no signs of this shortage stopping anytime soon and could persist until 2027, with this year’s supply already sold out.

So let’s take a look at what the global memory shortage is, the causes and what it means for leaders in the data centre industry.

What is the Global Memory Shortage?

In the IT world right now, we are in a supply chain crisis for RAM; there has been a huge demand for more memory, especially with data centres, which is now impacting everyone across the board, from tech companies, data centre operators, to even consumers. With this sharp rise in demand comes a lack of stock and a price hike that has seen some components more than double in price.

Not only does this affect data centre projects in the pipeline this year, but it also affects everyday consumers who want to purchase a mobile phone or a laptop, being warned that there will be hefty price increases coming.

What are the root causes behind this supply chain crisis?

This is a complex question and if you had a few hours, we could talk about it for that and then some. There is no one simple root cause that is clear; there are several factors, from market shifts, tech changes, AI demand and production shortages overlapping at the same time, causing widespread chaos in the hunt for memory.

AI adoption has driven the memory shortage, emerging as the primary culprit. This is because training large language models and running inference at scale requires high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in data centres, so they need more memory to handle the surge in AI high-density workloads. You could say the world’s appetite for artificial intelligence was the trigger behind this supply chain issue, but there were also other factors at play.

We’re also in the midst of a shift from the old memory standard, as it’s been challenging and tricky to shift the computer industry from DDR4 to DDR5, despite the fact that DDR5 first hit the consumer market four (almost five) years ago. This shift has taken a long time, and most of the industry has upgraded their tech to DDR5

This slow adoption has limited the capacity at which manufacturers can produce DDR5 RAM kits because there’s still a demand for DDR4 RAM kits. So with the lack of availability comes limited supply and with the AI demand, it’s no surprise that prices are hiking and memory is in short supp.ly.

Companies are under pressure to supply

Companies are feeling the heat and pressure to meet the demand driven by AI and data centres, with some of the leading manufacturers, such as Samsung, actually diverting their production away from DDR5 and concentrating on supplying data centres during this AI boom.

With them turning away from B2C production for everyday consumers, the domino effect will be a significant price hike, demand and supply issues for laptops, computers, mobile phones and other tech.

While desktop RAM shortages hit PC users hard in 2025, experts predict the worst is still ahead, with laptops and mobile phones expected to be hit hardest in the first half of 2026.

What this means for data centres

Everyone is feeling the pinch of this shortage, from consumers to IT teams, procurement teams, data centre operators and even hyperscalers, who have been negotiating open-ended agreements with manufacturers to get their hands on as much memory as they possibly can right now.

Memory is essential to the foundation of data centre operations and this global memory shortage has the potential to stall future projects, slow cloud migrations, and set the industry back in innovation and projects if this crisis continues.

Now, data centre leaders must forecast efficiently, modelling scenarios and anticipating challenges, diversifying their supply chain and exploring partnering with more suppliers, securing long-term agreements to protect projects and optimising their current assets to ensure that they are adopting a smart, efficient, forward-thinking approach to this memory shortage.