News about memory chips

The 5th GMIF Innovation Summit (GMIF2026) was held in Shenzhen under the theme 'The Future Built on AI Memory and Storage', co-hosted by the Shenzhen Memory Industry Association and the School of Integrated Circuits at Peking University. Daniel Yen of Morgan Stanley projected that more than half of cloud data center capex will go to memory and storage (excluding HBM) by 2027, and outlined six innovation paths to overcome the 'memory wall'. Prof. Yimao Cai said HBM remains central to high-end AI compute but is limited by yield, cost and thermal constraints, pointing to NAND-based high-bandwidth technologies such as HBF as a major research focus. Samsung's Kevin Yoon said AI agents are generating massive KV cache demand, while Sandisk's Maya Zhang called this the first year of the 'inference boom', in which SSDs act as a 'token battery'.

Memory chips have historically moved in boom-and-bust cycles, and Micron trades at a forward P/E of just over 5 times fiscal 2027 estimates as investors expect the current AI-driven supercycle to eventually end. Micron has signed 26 strategic customer agreements covering about 35% of its sales through 2030, while China's CXMT has lifted its DRAM share from 4% in Q2 2025 to 10% in Q2 2026 and could add new supply. KeyBanc analysts reportedly see HP and Dell extending their deals into 2031 and Alphabet talking about extensions to 2035. In the near term, KeyBanc projects DRAM prices rising 15% to 20% quarter over quarter, with NAND prices up more than 20%.