Goldman Sachs research seems to point towards DRAM and SSD prices spiking next year as memory supply lags behind demand

Another day, another reminder that the memory market is screwed, yippee. The storage market as well, actually, although the effects of the HBM and DRAM shortage have certainly been more visible than the effects of the NAND shortage so far. Now, new analyst commentary on Goldman Sachs research predicts—drumroll—a pretty bleak outlook on both memory and storage fronts. Shocker, I know.

Regarding memory, Citrini research analyst Jukan says on X, "demand for both High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and conventional DRAM continues to outstrip supply."

It looks like something that's expected to be the case throughout the year, too, given "full-year 2026 HBM volume and pricing negotiations for most DRAM suppliers appear to be effectively concluded."

Because of this, and "given current demand levels and persistent supply-demand imbalances, some suppliers see potential for conventional DRAM prices to rise by double-digit percentages (%) quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) throughout every quarter of 2026."

HBM will surely make up the majority of memory production, given that's primarily what's used in all those AI servers that are responsible for this mess.

Jukan also relays that, "At this stage, there appear to be no plans among vendors to convert HBM production lines to conventional DRAM or to repurpose NAND lines for DRAM." Which isn't really a surprise, but just serves as a reminder that the consumer market, including the gaming one, really isn't the priority here. That's not where the big money and the big demand are.

In other words, DRAM prices are expected to go up each quarter because supply will continue to fall behind increasing demand, and this DRAM will feed into HBM.

The situation doesn't look much better on the NAND side, either. Jukan has also commented on Goldman Sachs' research on this SSD storage market.

According to the analyst, "bit supply growth" is projected to be in the "mid-10% range" and "bit demand growth" in up to the "high-teens to 20% range." In other words, as with DRAM, the expected increase in supply isn't expected to keep up with the expected increase in demand. Even if there's more NAND produced than this year, there won't be enough NAND produced to keep up with still-increasing demand. Which, of course, means prices remaining high.

As Jukan explains: "We expect supply shortages to persist for at least the next several quarters, and potentially through 2027. We also anticipate this will lead to sequential (QoQ) pricing increases over the coming quarters."

Just the same as with DRAM, then.

The good news is that, judging by the charts Jukan shares, predicted supply and demand is judged to improve in 2027 after the 2026 spike. The differential with DRAM is expected to return to where it is now, and with NAND, it will still be worse than it is now, but better than it will be next year.

That's hardly a picture of beaming hope, but at least it shows a trajectory to an end of these supply constraints, even if that end isn't quite in sight just yet. Though some analysts predict another three or four years of shortage, so who knows? A crystal ball would be nice here, but sadly, it might just be a case of "wait and see."

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