Memory prices up 700%: Samsung, SK hynix and Micron face collusion suspicions

Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, the largest makers of memory chips, must explain in court why prices for their chips rose by hundreds of percent over the recent period. According to the cited data, the increase reached as much as 700%. The companies had previously said the spike merely reflected a "balance of price and demand" in a supply-constrained market.

What's behind the price spike

The memory chip shortage worsened sharply as demand for AI infrastructure exploded. Data centers are buying DDR5 modules and specialized HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) in bulk, and modern accelerators for training and inference of large language models do not work without HBM. AI chipmakers and cloud providers expanding their server fleets drove demand into limited production capacity, and memory prices climbed many times faster than prices for most other computer components. As a result, prices rose not only for server modules but also for ordinary RAM for PCs and laptops, because fabs are shifting capacity toward higher-margin AI memory.

• According to the cited data, memory prices rose by around 700%
• Samsung, SK hynix and Micron are at the center of the legal proceedings
• The companies' earlier explanation: a "balance of price and demand"
• The three manufacturers control almost the entire global DRAM market

Who is at the center of the case

South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK hynix and US-based Micron Technology are the world's three largest makers of DRAM and NAND flash memory. Together they produce the vast majority of the memory modules used in PCs, smartphones, servers and specialized AI accelerators. That concentration of the market in the hands of just three players is one reason their pricing came under close scrutiny: with so few suppliers, parallel, synchronized price increases look suspicious even without direct evidence of collusion.

Why the memory market alarmed regulators

When three or four companies dominate a market and a product's price rises several-fold while demand stays nominally stable, antitrust authorities typically investigate possible collusion rather than assume fair price competition. The DRAM market has been here before: in the mid-2000s, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon and several other memory makers pleaded guilty or paid fines in cartel cases in the US and the EU. The current case is unfolding against a far more acute shortage driven by the AI data center boom, which makes pricing especially sensitive for both regulators and buyers of server hardware.

The companies' "balance of price and demand" argument is a standard defense in cases like this: manufacturers point to a genuine capacity shortage and rising demand from AI infrastructure customers as a market-driven, not cartel-driven, explanation for the price spike. The court will have to determine where an objective market response to scarcity ends and coordinated behavior among competitors begins.

What it means

For the AI infrastructure market, the outcome of the case will directly affect server costs. Memory remains one of the scarcest and most expensive components of AI accelerators, and the court's decision may influence both future price trends and how quickly manufacturers ramp up chip production.