TrendForce: AI Demand Tightens Supply, Forecasts ~20% QoQ Rise in Q4 2026 DRAM Contract Prices

Market research firm TrendForce, citing multiple reports, forecasts that DRAM contract prices will rise by approximately 20% quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2026. This rate of increase represents a notable slowdown compared to the second quarter (~80%) and third quarter (~40%), but the DRAM market remains at high price levels with persistent supply tightness and strong demand.

The core driver behind the price increases is identified as the continued expansion of artificial intelligence inference demand. Larger models, longer context windows, and growing KV cache requirements are driving up capacity and bandwidth needs for server DRAM and enterprise SSDs. Simultaneously, major memory manufacturers are prioritizing production capacity for high-end products like High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), further tightening the supply of traditional DRAM.

Realistic reasons for the slowing growth include a higher base from previous price hikes, weakened purchasing power in end markets, and the gradual implementation of price caps in some long-term procurement agreements. Regarding HBM, due to tight supply, media reports suggest that NVIDIA is considering reducing the HBM stack layers for its next-generation GPU, Rubin Ultra, from 12 layers to 8. If other conditions remain unchanged, this would reduce HBM capacity per GPU by about 33%, but theoretically allow the same DRAM chip supply to support 50% more GPU shipments. However, because the cost proportion of base dies is higher in 8-layer HBM, the cost per Gb is expected to be 10% to 20% higher than 12-layer HBM in 2027.