"On December 3, The Wall Street Journal reported memory manufacturer Micron would wind down Crucial, its consumer business, to focus on components for the AI industry. The PC I'm writing this article on has an SSD and RAM from Crucial. Overnight, Micron decided to end a business it spent decades building, and from a certain perspective, I guess it makes sense. In recent months, OpenAI has signed more than $1.4 trillion worth of infrastructure deals, creating unprecedented demand for server-grade solid-state storage and RAM."
"For consumers, the result has been skyrocketing RAM prices, with some DDR5 kits now costing as much as two or three times as much as they did a couple of months ago. Recent analysis from TrendForce shows the price of some consumer-grade SSDs increased between 20 and 60 percent in November for the same reason. Then there's LPDDR5X memory, which is used in both smartphones and NVIDIA's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin platforms."
"If you've been thinking about upgrading to a new graphics card, I would recommend you buy one sooner rather than later. The AI boom came for RAM first, and there are already signs it will come for GPU pricing next. A recent report suggests AMD is considering raising the MSRP of its 8GB models by $20 and 16GB models by $40 due to the price of GDDR6 memory."
Micron plans to wind down Crucial and shift production toward AI-focused components, reallocating wafers and capacity to high-margin commercial customers. Massive infrastructure deals from firms like OpenAI have created unprecedented demand for server-grade SSDs and RAM. Consumer DDR5 and some SSD prices have surged, with DDR5 kits costing two to three times more and SSD prices rising 20–60 percent in November. LPDDR5X demand from smartphones and NVIDIA platforms is expected to push mobile-memory prices higher in 2026. GPU memory costs are rising, and AMD may raise MSRPs because of GDDR6 prices, so GPUs could become more expensive soon.
Read at www.engadget.com
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