Not just laptops, RAMpocalypse also seen as bottleneck for firms looking to adopt AI

MALAY, Aklan — Severe global shortages of high-bandwidth memory and server DRAM have emerged as the central bottleneck in the global artificial intelligence boom, and this is not likely to change anytime soon, the head of one of the Philippines’ largest IT distributors said. 

In a recorded message shown at the VST ECS CXO Tech Summit 2026, Jimmy Go said the shortage in memory and storage components is driving steep price surges and supply disruptions across the technology sector,

Go, who is the CEO and President of VST ECS Phils., Inc., said high-performance hardware constraints now dictate the pace of digital transformation as corporate demand for computing power accelerates.  

“At the heart of this transformation lies high-bandwidth memory and server DRAM shortage. AI workloads consume exponentially more memory, driving shortages and price surges that ripple across the global economy,” Go said. 

“Just as oil fueled the industrial age, memory now fuels the intelligent enterprise”.  

Citing data from a major supplier, Go said prices for memory and solid-state drives (SSDs) have more than doubled in recent months, with hyperscalers and data centers consuming the lion’s share of global supply. 

Go said that according to Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, there is no end in sight for the memory shortage, with over 75 percent of the manufacturer’s 2027 output already sold out. Micron even expects supply-demand conditions in 2027 and 2028 to be even tighter than in 2026.

This has resulted in inflated corporate budgets for IT and reshaped consumer hardware markets. Server-class high-speed DDR5 DRAM prices have jumped nearly 100 percent quarter-on-quarter, pushing many enterprise deployments into 2027.

Consumers meanwhile have already been feeling the effects of the component crunch, with notebook prices having climbed 30 to 50 percent, and smartphone shipments facing sharp global contractions.  

Despite supply bottlenecks and skyrocketing component costs, Go emphasized that businesses cannot afford to delay adopting AI tools into production.  

“In a fast-moving market, waiting for a technology to become ‘100 percent stable’ before adopting it is a death sentence,” Go told attendees. “By the time it is stable, your competitors have already optimized it, scaled it, and captured the margin. In the exponential era, perfection is the enemy of survival”.  

The annual VST ECS CXO Tech Summit gathers some of the biggest tech suppliers operating in the country, along with the IT officials of some of the biggest businesses and government agencies. The summit runs from Oct. 20-23 this year.