Investment bank UBS has significantly raised its price forecasts for DRAM and NAND memory chips, citing surging demand from artificial intelligence applications. The bank now projects DDR prices will climb 32% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2026, up sharply from a prior 17% estimate. For NAND, UBS forecasts 30% growth in the same quarter.
The surge is driven by hyperscale data center and AI server buildouts. Production capacity is being reallocated to high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, creating a broader supply squeeze.
UBS projects a record 17-percentage-point demand-supply gap in DRAM by 2027. Memory industry revenue forecasts have been raised to $992 billion for 2026 and $1.763 trillion for 2027.
The price increases impact both AI and crypto infrastructure. Higher memory costs raise the expense of building data centers, mining rigs, and blockchain nodes, affecting operational costs across the tech and digital asset sectors.