Samsung, SK Hynix flag record supply squeeze in memory market as AI demand soars

During Samsung’s first-quarter earnings call on Thursday, the company said its order fulfilment rate had plunged to a “record low”. In a rare move, customers worried about shortages were already pre-booking memory capacity for 2027, according to company executives.

Available supply was far short of customer demand, executives said, adding that production-ready capacity for the next-generation high bandwidth memory – the HBM4 – was fully booked.

Demand from major customers was increasing across the board – including HBM, dynamic random access memory and enterprise solid-state drives – while suppliers struggled to increase output, said Kim Woo-hyun, chief financial officer of SK Hynix, at the earnings call. He added that the current rising price cycle was expected to last longer than past industry cycles.