As we and others have written about extensively, AI training and inference expansion is severely constrained by the supply of memory, DRAM as well as NAND flash. These solid-state memory technologies are where the data lives to support AI workloads and they have been in increasingly short supply over the last two years.
The DRAM and NAND manufacturers have been reporting that they are sold out at least into 2027. As a result, prices have skyrocketed and these products are a serious constraint on the role out of new AI data centers and consumer applications.
In an interesting joint investment venture, Samsung and SK hynix are investing a combined 800 trillion Won ($518B) to build four new memory manufacturing sites and a high-bandwidth memory, HBM, packing hub in Korea’s Southwest Region to meet AI driven demand. The investment was announced by the two companies with Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung. Together Samsung and SK hynix produce about two thirds of the company’s DRAM memory chips.
Each company is building two fabrication plants in the Southwest region, which has lacked a major industrial hub. The companies didn’t say when these new fabs would be completed but Hynix’s chair, Chey Tae-won said that it took nine years for the company to build up its current manufacturing capability in Gyeonggi Province.
SK hynix announced late in 2025 that it was building its first US production site in West Lafayette, Indiana. This will be a $4B advanced packaging and R&D facility focusing on high bandwidth memory, HBM. Mass production is scheduled for late 2028. SK hynix also has its Solidigm subsidiary focusing on enterprise NAND flash and solid-state drives, SSDs, located near Sacramento, CA and an advanced R&D facility near Seattle.
Sandisk and Kioxia announced production of their 10th generation 3D flash memory technology at a manufacturing facility in Kitakami, Japan. The 10th generation NAND (BiCS10) has 332-layers of TLC flash memory with performance up to 4.8 Gb/s, a 33% improvement over the eighth-generation product.
BiCS10 applies advanced lateral scaling techniques to achieve industry-leading 1Tb TLC memory density greater than 29Gb/mm2, improving bit density by 59 percent while delivering up to 4.8Gb/s interface speed, a 33 percent improvement compared with 8th generation 3D flash memory currently in mass production.
BiCS10 TLC also enhances data input/output power efficiency, reducing power consumption by 10 percent for input and 34 percent for output compared to the previous BiCS8 generation. The manufacturing and design partnership between Sandisk and Kioxia has been extended through 2034.
Micron recently announced that they were investing a total of $3B to strengthen the US semiconductor supply chain. In particular, Micron provided GlobalWafers Co., Ltd. $500M to advance development and manufacturing at its GlobalWafers America 300mm raw silicon wafer manufacturing facility in Sherman, Texas. In exchange Micron has a 10-year supply agreement for wafers with GlobalWafers.
Micron also has new manufacturing facilities under construction in Idaho and New York state, but CEO Sanjay Mehrotra warned that meaningful large-scale new capacity is unlikely to arrive before 2028 due to the lengthy timelines for building the fabrication facilities. Micron is currently meeting only about 50% to two-thirds of core customer demand.
Samsung, SK hynix, Sandisk, Kioxia and Micron report building out new DRAM and NAND flash manufacturing and packaging facilities to meet AI demand. However, significant new manufacturing capacity won’t be on line until late 2027 or 2028.
