AI Demand Sends Memory Prices Soaring 500 Percent

The surge in RAM costs reflects datacenter operators and AI companies bidding up limited supply to train and run large language models. Memory has become a genuine bottleneck in the AI infrastructure buildout rather than a commodity component. This pricing pressure is accelerating vertical integration—cloud providers building their own chips—and making smaller AI startups dependent on expensive cloud APIs rather than self-hosted infrastructure. AI capability is concentrating further among well-capitalized players.