Has *Silent Hill* Come to Life? AI Has Sent Memory Chip Prices Soaring Through the Roof

The fan hummed dully as it spun deep into the night, the computer case like a sealed hospital ward. You stared at the string of ever-rising cost figures on the screen; your palms grew warm, yet your back gradually turned cold. It felt a lot like a horror game where you know something is behind the door, but you still have to push it open. Right now, the cloud computing and chip markets are moving forward under exactly this kind of pressure.

Recently, media reports said that exploding AI demand is dragging the memory chip market into a new restructuring of supply and demand. Tencent executives put it bluntly: the AI wave is not only driving DRAM and HBM, but also reviving demand for related components such as CPUs, SSDs, and HDDs. Once you step back and look at it, you realize this is no longer a shortage of just one category of chips—an entire chain is starting to tighten.

What is even more unsettling is that order cycles have been stretched out tremendously. Relevant orders now often need to be booked months, quarters, or even years in advance. It carries the same oppressive feeling as being slowly boiled alive. In the short term, what you see is rising prices; in the long term, you realize that even access to supply is itself becoming a scarce resource.

Against this backdrop, suppliers will naturally prioritize their largest and most reliable customers. Major cloud providers like Tencent Cloud, for example, are more likely to secure guarantees. As for smaller cloud vendors, stable supply is becoming increasingly difficult. There is nothing romantic behind this—just the cold reality of business: when the “bullets” in the warehouse are running low, you feed the main force first.

And rising costs will, in all likelihood, eventually be passed on to users. Tencent executives have already made it clear that the industry may have no choice but to shift the pressure into higher prices. Over the past 24 hours, several Chinese cloud vendors have indeed raised prices across multiple product lines. For ordinary gamers, this may seem far removed from games, but it really is not. As AI training, cloud services, and data storage all become more expensive, the impact in the future may extend beyond corporate bills and gradually reach game servers, cloud gaming, and even content production costs.

But what truly unsettles me is not this, but the timeline. The chairman of SK Group said that due to structural constraints in chip production, the global memory chip shortage is likely to continue until 2030. If that judgment proves correct, then this wave of price hikes is not some cheap jump scare that suddenly lunges at your face, but a long-form suspense film. You think the end credits are about to roll, only for the lights to come up and the monster is still standing at the door.

Samsung’s numbers also say it all. Driven by soaring global memory prices, Samsung’s semiconductor business posted revenue of 37.1 trillion won, about $25.93 billion, up 62% year-on-year, while continuing to firmly hold its position as the global storage leader. The market’s fear is often the industry leader’s earnings.

My view is simple: in the short term, leading cloud providers will be better able to withstand the pressure, while small and mid-sized vendors will feel it more acutely; in the medium to long term, as long as AI demand does not cool, storage prices will be very unlikely to truly return to past levels. For enterprise users, if you have clear plans for computing power and storage procurement, stop imagining that “waiting a little longer will make it cheaper.” Locking in resources in stages may be more prudent than betting on a market pullback. As for ordinary users, if you have noticed certain cloud products, online storage services, or development services quietly becoming more expensive lately, do not be surprised—this is not your imagination, but a real-life thriller that has already arrived outside your door.