Lhamo Fitzsimons highlights how the prices of tech hardware are ballooning because of AI.
Whether you’re an AI lover or hater, I think we can all agree that crashing the entire world's global tech supply is ‘not good’.
Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) has officially made himself the No.1 enemy of gamers. ‘Wasn’t he already?’, you might ask for a multitude of reasons that are all equally valid. Well, yes, but now, it’s even worse, now it's P(c)ersonal.
DO worry, because absolutely no one is safe from this man’s latest moves in the AI race.
Everyone needs chips…(you included) because everything requires chips. Whether it’s your phone, your laptop, or your boss’s factory, your favourite Fortune 500, they need memory and storage. Say hi to memory aka RAM, and storage, aka drives, aka SSDs/HDDs.
If you haven’t realised it yet, Sam Altman just said ‘dibs’ on chip production for the next few years. All the ‘Wafers’ that make up the chips that power every aspect of modern life? All diverted to build an AI project called Stargate. Now the entire world is scrambling over the sudden shortage of crucial parts needed for memory, storage and graphics cards. In just 3 months, prices have exploded in catastrophic increases of over 500% for RAM.
Small businesses are already folding, and smartphone companies have announced that it will affect unit pricing. Perhaps you’ve already noticed, or felt the effects, or maybe you’re a frog in slowly boiling water.
What’s up with RAM? Well, for starters, only three companies make it. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron (through its Crucial brand) manufacture the DRAM chips for RAM, controlling global supply. Last year, OpenAI put together a plan in June 2025 and locked in its orders in October of 2025, buying 40% of the world's global DRAM production capacity for the foreseeable future. These contracts snatched up chips reaching past 2027 production, with projected supply issues until at least 2029. And thus the world imploded.
But it’s not just the terminally online who are affected, there’ll be no justice for all the PC builders, PC buyers, console buyers, and phone buyers… and just about every consumer and manufacturer in the world.
When was the last time YOU bought a new phone, PC, techy gadget, part, or console?
Last summer, my computer needed a storage upgrade. I bought 1TB of SSD internal storage for €64. The same one in January 2026 is €140. An increase of over 118%. I spoke to multiple UCD students who build their own PCs and upgrades, all facing price spikes as RAM and PC components priced in the €50 range just six months ago have now climbed into the several hundreds.
(A UCD student sent me their receipt from September, priced at €148, and the current price ranging from €541-700)
PC building previously was a cost-effective and more sustainable method for many students to upgrade and maintain their computers, but now most can't afford the new €500-800 price range for RAM.
In fact, most listings for all previously standard affordable storage and RAM now just say unavailable. As prices soar, people hoard and upsell, and the majority of the world loses.
The solution: Companies are selling yesterday's bread at today's prices.
NVIDIA and others are resorting to selling DDR4 RAM, launched over 12 years ago, with peaks in 2016. Truly, 2026 is the year of return to 2016. Modern RAM, aka DDR5 RAM, took over in 2020 and became the standard in 2022-2023. Now, as GPUs are taken for AI, and DDR5 is taken for AI, companies are resuming production of tech which was cutting-edge 10 years ago to sell to consumers en masse, for the cheap price of… 32GB DDR4 for over €300. It was under €100 in June of 2025.
However, modern software and file sizes are a little heavy for this decade-old tech being sold at premium prices. Windows 11 ALONE prefers 16GB RAM, with more recommended.
Is Sam Altman trying to price out all others who dare enter the AI race, removing the capability of the entire industry with parts shortages and price shocks that none but his trillion dollar budget can handle? Challengers and any opponents seeking to revolutionise AI will have to deal with a lack of anything left for them to build with, and what little chips they can find, at extortionate prices. This scorched-earth AI-first policy is being felt across the world. As for the gaming industry, the reality of the price impacts are already being felt.
Even if you hate gamers or have never even touched a video game, this crisis will affect you. This will affect everyone from the most average non-techy consumer to the industrial manufacturer.
In today's smart world, everything is a computer, and everyone needs chips.