Videos · October 19, 2026 · 39 seconds
The AI Memory Squeeze: Why Your Next Laptop Costs More
Memory-chip prices roughly doubled in 2026 after Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron moved production toward the chips AI data centers buy. Laptops and phones are paying for it, and the forecasts run to 2028.
Read the full articleby Adam Cannizzaro
Transcript
THE AI MEMORY SQUEEZE: WHY YOUR NEXT LAPTOP COSTS MORE
[THE SQUEEZE] AI bought the memory first.
- Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron make more than 90% of the world's memory chips, and they are steering their factories toward chips for the data centers that run AI.
- An AI memory chip takes about three times the factory space of the kind in a laptop, so every AI order leaves less memory for everyone else.
[THE BILL] Less memory, higher prices.
- The price makers charge for ordinary memory chips nearly doubled in early 2026, and Valve raised its Steam Deck OLED gaming handheld from $549 to $789, blaming memory costs.
- AMD's head of consumer chips expects prices to settle around 2028, so buy all the memory you need when you buy the laptop.
Read the full article at noozify.com. Images: Images: a Micron DDR5 memory module by PantheraLeo1359531 (CC BY 4.0); an Nvidia H100 accelerator card by Geekerwan (CC BY 3.0); a Steam Deck OLED by SparklesTrainNerd (CC BY-SA 4.0); all via Wikimedia Commons. Music: an original score for Noozify.