AI frenzy signals end of boom and bust for memory chipmakers

Samsung crossed the $1 trillion valuation mark after shares surged on AI-driven chip demand, making it only the second Asian company after TSMC to hit the milestone.

Bargains are disappearing and the cost of gadgets such as MacBooks and PS5s is rising as AI competes for memory chips The end of the cheap laptop, the bargain phone and affordable games consoles may be on the horizon. Not because new models are more hi-tech, but because the cost of computer components has shot up. Recently, the biggest manufacturers of laptops and phones, including Microsoft, Samsung and Dell, started putting up prices and pulling cheaper models – which is going to make finding budget phones and laptops under £400 much harder. Continue reading...

The AI boom is worsening a global memory chip shortage, which Samsung predicts will continue into 2027 Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported record quarterly profit driven by a 49-fold jump in chip income, saying it expects a severe supply shortage to deepen next year as clients spend on AI, driving up prices of its memory chips. A boom in the construction of AI datacentres has spurred Samsung and chipmaking peers to allocate production capacity to advanced chips that Nvidia uses in its so-called AI accelerators. Even so, chipmakers are struggling to meet demand while the move also squeezes the supply of conventional chips. Continue reading...

South Korean AI startup Searchdoc has secured approximately $2.1 million in early-stage funding, combining a seed round with support from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund’s Innovative Startup Growth Support Program. Founded in March 2025 by engineers from AWS, Naver, and Samsung, the company has developed AI capable of analyzing large-scale industrial documents and technical drawings […]

The AI-driven memory shortage is hitting Samsung's bottom line.

Second-largest memory chipmaker says customers prioritising procurement over pricing amid supply crunch

According to Nikkei Asia, even as suppliers ramp up DRAM production, manufacturers are only expected to meet 60 percent of demand by the end of 2027. SK Group chairman has even said that shortages could last until 2030. The world's largest memory makers - Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron - are all working to add new fabrication capacity, but almost none of it will be online until at least 2027, if not 2028. SK opened a fab in Cheongju in February, but that is the only increase in production among the three for 2026. Nikkei says that production would need to increase by 12 percent a year in 2026 and 2027 to meet demand. But according to Counte … Read the full story at The Verge.

Strategic investment facilitates collaboration on next-generation AI infrastructure optimized for memory-intensive workloads Semidynamics, an advanced computing company developing memory-centric AI infrastructure for large-scale inference, today announced a strategic investment from SK hynix, one of the world’s leading memory manufacturers. The investment reflects a shared conviction that memory architecture, not compute... The post Semidynamics Lands Investment to Advance AI Inference Chips first appeared on AI-Tech Park.