NDRC Monitoring: Memory Chip Prices Hit Nine-Year High

The National Development and Reform Commission's (NDRC) Price Monitoring Center recently pointed out that since September 2025, the global memory market gap has widened, and memory chip prices have continued to rise rapidly. As of January this year, the average contract price of DRAM (DDR4 8Gb) reached US$11.5, an increase of 83% compared to September last year; the average price of NAND flash memory (128Gb) reached US$9.5, an increase of nearly 1.5 times, both reaching new highs since 2016. The NDRC pointed out that the main reason for the price increase is the explosive demand for AI servers, with the memory demand per unit reaching eight times that of traditional servers; at the same time, giants such as Samsung have shifted more than 80% of their advanced production capacity to high-bandwidth memory, leading to a shortage of consumer-grade memory supply; rising raw material prices and panic buying by downstream users have further pushed up prices.