The global chip industry just got a stark wake-up call. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has warned that semiconductor wafer supplies will fall more than 20% short of demand through the end of this decade. The fallout could touch everything from AI servers to the phone in your pocket.
What SK Group’s Chairman Said at NVIDIA GTC 2026
1 Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of NVIDIA’s GTC Conference in San Jose, California, Chey said that SK Hynix is reviewing a potential U.S. ADR listing to broaden its global investor base, while its CEO may unveil plans to stabilize DRAM chip prices. 2 “AI actually wants to have a lot of HBM, and once you make the HBM…we have to use a lot of wafers,” Chey explained.
1He added that the industry needs at least four to five years to build up wafer capacity, warning the current shortage could continue until 2030 with more than a 20% supply gap.
7 “Rapidly increasing wafer production is physically impossible, so we need to look at least two to three years ahead,” the chairman said. 15 He also explained that even if they build production capacity outside Korea, it takes the same amount of time, but Korea already has an established foundation, so they can respond much faster. 7 At a recent event in Washington, D.C., Chey pointed out a striking market distortion: HBM margins sit at 60%, while conventional chip margins are at 80%. That gap explains why every wafer directed toward AI memory is a wafer pulled away from consumer products.
SK Hynix wafer shortage AI memory demand impact on DRAM prices
Why AI Is Eating the World’s Wafer Supply
The root of this crisis is simple. AI data centers are hungry for High Bandwidth Memory, and making HBM gobbles up wafers at a rate nobody planned for.
2 SK Hynix ranks No.1 in the HBM market with a 57% revenue share and holds a 32% share of the global DRAM market, making it the second-largest player, according to Counterpoint. 13 UBS predicts SK Hynix will achieve roughly a 70% market share in the HBM4 market for NVIDIA’s next-generation Rubin platform in 2026.
Here is a quick snapshot of the current supply and demand gap:
| Factor | Details |
|---|---|
| Wafer supply gap | Over 20% through 2030 |
| Time to build new wafer capacity | 4 to 5 years minimum |
| 2026 memory supply growth (TrendForce) | 23% |
| 2026 memory demand growth (TrendForce) | 35% |
| Data center share of 2026 memory output | ~70% |
| Server DRAM price hikes (Q1 2026 vs Q4 2025) | 60% to 70% |
16 The increase in demand is scaling up faster than production. TrendForce predicts that memory supply will increase by 23% in 2026, but demand will be up by 35%. 3 “This is no longer a cyclical imbalance. It is a structural reallocation of the memory market driven by AI infrastructure economics,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research.
How Consumers and the Gaming Industry Are Feeling the Pain
This is not just a data center problem. The ripple effects are hitting everyday consumers hard.
25 Every wafer allocated to an HBM stack for an NVIDIA GPU is a wafer denied to the LPDDR5X module of a mid-range smartphone or the SSD of a consumer laptop. 25 As a result, IDC expects 2026 DRAM and NAND supply growth to be below historical norms at 16% year-on-year and 17% year-on-year, respectively.
The gaming world is getting squeezed the hardest.
- 42 Sony could be forced to delay the PS6 to 2029 due to the rising cost of RAM, while Nintendo is reportedly considering increasing the price of the Switch 2.
- 42 Valve’s Steam Machine launch has slipped from early 2026, with the ongoing RAM shortage driven by skyrocketing AI data center demand affecting all hardware makers.
- 25 PC vendors are signaling broad price increases as cost pressures intensify into the second half of 2026. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and ASUS have warned clients of tougher conditions ahead, confirming 15% to 20% hikes.
- 21 Personal computing device and smartphone sales, which were anticipated to grow in 2025, are now expected to decline in 2026 due to rising memory prices.
15 Chey himself expressed concern, saying, “If we focus too much on HBM, regular DRAM becomes scarce, affecting existing industries such as smartphones and PCs.”
SK Hynix’s Plan to Stabilize DRAM Prices
Despite the grim outlook, there is a glimmer of hope. SK Group hinted that a price stabilization plan is in the works.
7 Chey said, “We will do our best for price stabilization,” and added that CEO Kwak Noh-jung will soon announce a new plan to stabilize DRAM prices. 7 The announcement aims to sustain artificial intelligence ecosystem growth by stabilizing prices, given the reality that memory supply cannot be dramatically increased in the short term.
But stabilizing prices is not the same as lowering them. Consumers should be cautious with their expectations. 19Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are raising quoted prices for server DRAM by 60% to 70% for Q1 2026 compared with Q4 2025, as demand continues to outstrip supply. Even if prices level off, they may remain far above what buyers were paying a year ago.
11 SK Hynix plans to increase DRAM production capacity by up to eight times in 2026, but analysts and OEMs warn that the expansion will not be sufficient to ease current memory shortages.
Key takeaway: A stabilization plan does not guarantee affordable RAM kits. It means prices may stop climbing as fast, not that they will come back down to 2024 levels any time soon.
What Analysts Say About the Road Ahead
Industry experts are divided on just how long the pain will last.
3 Gartner’s Shrish Pant noted that a 2030 horizon assumes AI demand grows without interruption, saying, “HBM wafer reallocation is very real and is definitely impacting the market till the end of 2027.” He suggested that traditional DRAM prices could improve by 2028 as new fabs come online. 3 Greyhound Research’s Gogia was more direct: “These technologies will not eliminate the structural constraint on memory before 2030.” 3 With HBM manufacturing concentrated in South Korea, U.S. export controls tightening, and China accelerating domestic memory capacity through firms like CXMT, Gogia said memory has become a geopolitical asset, introducing supply risks that traditional vendor diversification alone cannot fix. 16 Meanwhile, U.S. company Micron is planning to invest nearly $10 billion in a new DRAM facility in Japan, but that plant will not start shipping memory chips until the second half of 2028.
The bottom line is clear. Relief is not coming fast. Building semiconductor fabs takes years, not months. And as long as every tech giant on the planet is racing to build AI infrastructure, the pressure on wafer supply will not ease.
For consumers, this means higher prices on everything from laptops and phones to gaming consoles and RAM kits for the foreseeable future. For businesses planning IT upgrades, locking in long-term memory contracts now might be the smartest move. And for the global tech industry, SK Group’s warning is not just a forecast. It is a signal that the AI boom carries costs that reach far beyond the data center walls. If you have felt the pinch of rising tech prices or faced delays on your favorite hardware, you are not alone. Drop a comment below and share how this shortage has affected you.
