Framework has published an official company blog post announcing that it is preparing a 50% price increase for its DDR5 memory upgrade configurations. In an effort to remain transparent with customers, the company has stated that it intends to raise the price of DDR5 memory available in Framework Laptop DIY Edition orders by 50%. This decision is a direct response to the significantly higher costs the company is facing from its DRAM suppliers and distributors. As a result, the company cannot absorb all of these cost increases on its own and needs to pass some of them on to the consumer.

The company will not increase the prices of its existing pre-configured systems that include DRAM, as these were acquired at earlier, standard prices. As the memory market becomes more volatile, this might be just the first wave of price hikes, since the company cannot absorb the added costs of new memory orders. Since Framework manufactures various components, from laptops to mini-PCs, the company uses a mix of DDR5, LPDDR5X, and GDDR. All of these are in tight supply due to the AI boom depleting any remaining DRAM inventory.Finally, Framework provides insight into the scale of DRAM consumption driven by AI expansion. For example, NVIDIA's GB300 rack-scale solution includes 20 TB of HBM3E and 17 TB of LPDDR5X. The amount of LPDDR5X used could support a thousand laptops, and an AI data center contains thousands of such racks. This suggests that the DRAM used by a single AI data center could equip about a million laptops. Considering the global expansion of AI data centers, this situation quickly puts pressure on smaller DRAM consumers like laptop manufacturers. Fortunately, Framework maintains strong relationships with Micron and ADATA for memory supply.