Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

Tesla signs $16.5 billion chip contract with Samsung Electronics

• The Samsung-Tesla deal comes at a sensitive time that the Trump administration’s stated intention of imposing 25% tariffs. This new contract may trigger a recovery in its foundry business’ 2-nanometer generation chip production and boost the company’s foundry sales by 10% annually.

Sandisk forms Technical Advisory Board to guide development and strategy for high-bandwidth flash memory technology

• High-bandwidth flash (HBF) is set to revolutionize edge AI by equipping devices with memory capacity and bandwidth capabilities that will support sophisticated models running locally in real time, this advancement will unlock a new era of intelligent edge applications, fundamentally changing how and where AI inference is performed.

Kioxia unveils LC9 series up to 245.76TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe 2.5-Inch and EDSFF E3.L form factor SSD

• This new capacity and form factor option is purpose-built for the performance and efficiency demands of GenAI environments. GenAI places unique demands on storage, including the need to store vast datasets for training large language models (LLMs), and to create embeddings and vector databases that support inference through retrieval augmented generation (RAG). These workloads require storage solutions with exceptional capacity, speed, and efficiency.

SK Hynix reports a 68% record jump in profit as demand for AI chips soars

• As a key supplier to AI giant Nvidia, the company is on track to double HBM chip sales for the full year, and new model launches by customers would drive high-end AI chip demand growth.

Micron starts to ship samples of HBM4 memory to key clients

• The new memory assemblies for next-generation AI and HPC processors feature a 36 GB capacity and offer bandwidth of 2 TB/s

• The samples rely on 24GB DRAM devices made on the company's 1ß (1-beta) DRAM process technology as well as logic base dies produced by TSMC using its 12FFC+ (2nm-class) or N5 (5nm-class) logic process technology.

• It is expected that Nvidia's codenamed Vera Rubin GPUs for datacenters will be among the first products to adopt HBM4 in late 2026.

SUPPLY TREND

2024-2025 Worldwide SSD Shipment

SSD is entering its seasonal demand lull. Influenced by North American inventory and China’s stern approach towards smuggling of imported memory products, Q3 flash shipments have dropped to the lowest level of 2025

2024-2025 Worldwide DRAM Output

DRAM production capacity is focused on server DIMM and mobile applications. Industry analysts expect overall demand for advanced-process DRAM to continue rising through 2026

2024-2025 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio

Flash Sufficiency: maintain at low level since 2024.

Price Trend: NAND flash price had a slight bound in 2025/B and is expected to maintain at an average level throughout 2025 as chip makers’ plan of production cut continues, despite the general demand isn’t significantly strong and some inventory exist.