Thursday, January 22nd 2026
Samsung Memory Distributor Reportedly Hikes Prices by 80%
Everyone is aware of the massive memory shortage the industry is currently experiencing, yet prices are reportedly still rising. According to an anonymous Samsung memory distributor, an immediate price hike of 80% has been applied. Later, an employee from the Device Solutions Campus in Giheung, located south of Seoul, confirmed this information. However, we still lack official confirmation from other third-party sources. If the 80% hike is accurate, it will likely apply to the latest batch of contract prices Samsung has imposed on its distributors. As new contract negotiations occur every quarter, it seems the 80% price increase is applied for Q1, given that the effect is noted as immediate.
The scope of this adjustment includes all Samsung memory products, which encompass a diverse range of offerings such as DDR, HBM, LPDDR, and GDDR solutions. These products are used in mobile devices, desktops, embedded systems, graphics cards, AI accelerators, and more. However, since some memory products are supplied directly to Samsung's customers without distributors, it is likely that only certain types of these products will experience a significant price increase, if the reports are accurate. We still have a few weeks left before the trickle-down economics of the supply chain start to manifest, so we will know for sure if these rumors are true.
Update 18:36 UTC: : According to UDN, Samsung has denied these price hikes, claiming that the company has not issued a comprehensive price increase across its memory products.
Sources:
Source on X, via Wccftech
The scope of this adjustment includes all Samsung memory products, which encompass a diverse range of offerings such as DDR, HBM, LPDDR, and GDDR solutions. These products are used in mobile devices, desktops, embedded systems, graphics cards, AI accelerators, and more. However, since some memory products are supplied directly to Samsung's customers without distributors, it is likely that only certain types of these products will experience a significant price increase, if the reports are accurate. We still have a few weeks left before the trickle-down economics of the supply chain start to manifest, so we will know for sure if these rumors are true.
Update 18:36 UTC: : According to UDN, Samsung has denied these price hikes, claiming that the company has not issued a comprehensive price increase across its memory products.
15 Comments on Samsung Memory Distributor Reportedly Hikes Prices by 80%
bid starts at one million dollars
the ram it self is 0.03 grams per die
at dram exchage 8x 2GB dies go for $55
so 55/8 is about 7
so if it's $7 per 0.03g that would make it about 232 per gram of dram
gold is going for about $160 per gram
I recently email them about two things about Samsung memory products in particular SSD here in SG.
1) Here in SG literally stocks for Samsung SSD product are drying out.
When stocks are dried prices are high accordingly to many retailers.
2) DRAM prices have not only spike RAM prices but also SSD.
Current retail price here in SG for 32GB ram is at $700 - $1k literally is gold prices.
SSD wise also have spike previously was around $100 for 1TB but now close to $400.
Current price hike is not a small margin but a hefty increase of around 60%.
Samsung is trying to deny there's no price hike while in fact there is.
For Samsung SSD most of the models have literally no stocks, Samsung 870 EVO in fact is non-existent
here in SG as well as Samsung 990 EVO plus.
Samsung 990 Pro and 9100 pro stocks are limited which is why retailers price are high due to
low stock.
4 terabytes of Nemix server RAM on sixteen 256GB DIMMs, reported recently on TPU to cost $70,000, now costs $90,000. At that price, no wonder it's sold out. That's 566 g of gold (I look at prices at Kitco).
As for weight, I find too little reliable data. This Corsair workstation RAM weighs 308 g for eight 32GB DIMMs without heatsinks. Seems realistic to me for bare modules without packaging. Sixteen would be 616 g. Now Nemix is somewhat heavier, there are 40 chips instead of 10 on Corsair, and the PCB may be larger. But it probably still comes close to gold.
As for SSDs, many 8TB M.2 variants are above gold already, as Tom's unsurprisingly discovered.
And gold/USD isn't standing still, it's up 21% in three months.
And we got it all wrong, we should be endlessly thankful that it isn't worse, they're cutting their own throat so we can even have this!
No, companies would never issue false statements for their PR...
But I do not believe Nvidia had a direct hand in that.
"The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed on Wednesday an appeal by artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab seeking to avoid a securities fraud lawsuit by shareholders who accused the company of misleading investors about how much of its sales depended on the volatile cryptocurrency market."
US Supreme Court dismisses Nvidia's bid to avoid securities fraud suit
and yeah the next generation they jacked up the prices and lockdowns made it worse
Just like in the beginning of AI craze gaming sector suddenly got curiously raised revenue - and people were claiming it's from all the home, small company LLM / AI purchases of gaming GPUs for these uses. Soon after that Nvidia renamed Gaming into "Gaming and AI PC", but since then the revenue has been falling. People stopped doing local AI all of a sudden? Somebody decided they don't have to spread the server revenue into other sectors, let officially be known we are AI first and foremost!
But this is of course off topic, I just wanted to say that such PR statements by companies are worth less than a paper they're printed on - if they can use revenue data that's heavily regulated as a PR that has very little connection to reality.
Maybe they are going to try it again at 70% so it looks more acceptable. Like how big gaming publishers like to push for over the top monitisation then dial it back and notch when it provokes a negative response from the community but then ever so slightly sneak it in 1% at a time till it all seems acceptable.