After a month, prices of Samsung Electronics' Q1 DRAM increased again, with the growth rate raised from 70% to 100%.

The AI infrastructure investment boom continues to heat up, the global memory market supply and demand imbalance intensifies, and Samsung Electronics' first-quarter DRAM price increase has finally been determined to be over 100%, which is higher than the negotiation result a month ago. According to Korean electronic news on March 4th, Samsung Electronics has finalized the first-quarter DRAM supply price negotiations with major customers last month. The average price of server, PC, and mobile DRAM has increased by about 100% compared to the previous quarter, doubling from the fourth quarter of last year. Some customers and products have even seen price increases of over 100%. The report quoted industry insiders as saying that the negotiations have been fully completed, and some overseas customers have already made payments. This price increase is higher than the 70% level negotiated in January this year, expanding by about 30 percentage points in just one month. The rapid increase in prices is reshaping the memory industry's contract conventions. Supply negotiations have shifted from traditional annual contracts to quarterly contracts, and now even require monthly adjustments, reflecting the severity of the market supply and demand imbalance. HBM squeezing capacity, universal DRAM supply restricted The core driver of the sharp rise in DRAM prices in this round comes from the global expansion of AI infrastructure investment. As data center operators deploy AI chips on a large scale, the demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that supports computational power is skyrocketing. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron have all shifted their capacity towards HBM, leading to a significant squeeze on the supply of universal DRAM for servers, PCs, and mobile terminals. While the supply is shrinking, demand remains strong. Demand for terminal products such as AI servers, AI PCs, and AI smartphones continues to be robust, leading to an expanding supply-demand gap that drives prices higher. According to reports, some overseas tech giants have traveled to South Korea to directly negotiate with memory manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics to secure their supply, further intensifying market tension. SK Hynix and Micron see similar price increases This round of price increases is not a unilateral action by Samsung Electronics. According to reports quoting industry sources, SK Hynix and Micron have also completed first-quarter supply contract negotiations with similar increases, and the pattern of the three major memory manufacturers collectively raising prices has basically taken shape. Looking back to January this year, Samsung Electronics' quarterly DRAM contract price increased by about 70%, and NAND increased by about 100%, which drew widespread attention at the time. The further increase in DRAM prices to over 100% this time indicates that in the ongoing negotiations, demand growth continues to outpace supply expansion, forcing prices to rise again. The upward trend is expected to continue into the second quarter The market's expectation for an upward trend in memory prices remains strong. According to Gartner, a research firm, this year's total price increase for DRAM and solid state drives (SSDs) is expected to be about 130% higher than last year. NVIDIA reported its best performance in history on February 25th, further dispelling doubts about an AI bubble and providing strong support for the continued expansion of memory demand. According to industry sources quoted in the report, DRAM and NAND prices are expected to continue their upward trend in the second quarter, with a possible slowdown, but the trend of price increases itself is irreversible. For downstream customers, the continuous increase in memory procurement costs will further raise the overall cost structure of servers and terminal devices. This article is reprinted from Wall Street See, GMTEight Editor: Chen Wenfang.