AI Companies Eat All the Memory Chips, Phones and PCs Left Starving

KEY POINTS

•In December, IDC warned that AI companies are driving memory chip demand beyond supply, squeezing smartphone and PC makers.
•OpenAI plans to spend $1.4 trillion on data centers, while Meta and Google project tens of billions in AI infrastructure for 2025.
•The shortage has caused price hikes by Dell, ASUS, and others, leading to expected smartphone and PC market contractions in 2026.

Forget pocket monsters—AI giants like OpenAI ($1.4 trillion in data center dreams), Meta ($70–72 billion on AI hype in 2025), and Google ($91–93 billion capex flex) are gobbling up memory chips like they’re digital snacks. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, once delicate chipmakers feeding phones and PCs, now hustle high-bandwidth memory for AI’s voracious language model appetites. IDC broke the bad news in December, forecasting smartphone markets shrinking by up to 5.2% and PCs by a staggering 8.9% in 2026. Dell’s price tags just jumped $55–765, ASUS and Framework jumped on the bandwagon, blaming AI’s chip hunger. Meanwhile, your favorite devices might just starve or cost you more—AI’s memory feast doesn’t come cheap.