As an unprecedented DRAM crisis unfolds, artificial intelligence is sowing chaos on another front: storage. Data centers using nearline HDDs are switching to SSDs to avoid lead times, which has led to a supply squeeze for NAND flash memory — one that's set to only worsen as the insatiable appetite for AGI continues to grow. As reported by Digitimes, Phison CEO Khein-Seng Pua confirmed that NAND prices have more than doubled in the past six months and that he expects it to stay this way for a while. In fact, all NAND production capacity has already been sold out for all of 2026.
The same 1 TB TLC chip that cost $4.80 in July of this year now costs $10.70. That might not seem like a big jump in a vacuum, but the ripple effect carries huge consequences when scaled up. The end-consumer looking to build their next PC is who pays for this added cost. For enterprise customers, whom Pua says Phison is prioritizing, their backers can keep pouring in more and more money since the AI boom has created a sort of bulletproof safety net around investments.
