SanDisk Hikes NAND Prices 50% Amid AI Boom

According to reports, SanDisk has sharply raised its NAND flash contract prices by 50% for November, signaling a rapid tightening in the memory market. The surge reflects two key forces: the relentless demand from AI data centers and the increasingly limited wafer supply across the semiconductor industry.

Industry insiders report that SanDisk's price move has sent ripples through the storage ecosystem, prompting major module makers like Transcend, Innodisk, and Apacer Technology to halt shipments and reassess pricing strategies. Transcend, in particular, suspended its quotations and deliveries on November 7, noting that "the market outlook remains bullish" — a hint that prices may continue to climb before stabilizing.

The financial results tell a similar story. Transcend's Q3 FY2025 revenue hit NT$4.11 billion (around US$133 million), up 27% quarter-on-quarter and 63% year-on-year, with a robust 45% gross margin and a 334% jump in net profit. Innodisk's revenue climbed 64% to NT$3.8 billion (US$123 million), with net profit surging nearly 250%. Apacer also posted impressive growth, with revenue up 70% year-on-year to NT$3.22 billion (US$104 million).

These companies attribute their earnings boom to wafer foundries focusing on high-margin DRAM production, especially DDR5 and HBM chips for AI servers and high-performance computing. However, that shift has left older DDR4 products — still vital for industrial and enterprise systems — in short supply, driving up downstream memory prices even further.

As wafer fabs allocate more capacity to advanced memory used in GPUs and accelerators, mainstream products like consumer SSDs, embedded modules, and DDR4 face growing shortages. This structural imbalance has boosted memory makers' profits but strained OEMs and end users trying to secure stable supply.

With SanDisk's NAND price hikes and DRAM availability still tight, SSD and memory module prices are set to keep rising rather than falling. Historically, memory manufacturers have been cautious about expanding capacity too quickly once margins improve. And with AI workloads continuing to absorb nearly all available production, the supply squeeze could persist well into 2026 — unless the AI boom abruptly cools, which might bring its own market turmoil.