AI Boom Fuels DRAM Shortage, Threatening Apple’s Supply-Chain Advantage

Apple has long leveraged its vast purchasing scale to secure lower prices and stable supplies from Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. But major cloud providers are expanding AI data centers, leaving high-bandwidth memory and conventional DRAM competing for production capacity. Supply-chain leverage is gradually shifting toward AI customers.

NVIDIA’s rollout of its next-generation Rubin platform in 2026 is further boosting data-center memory demand, pushing up DRAM prices as supplies tighten. Suppliers now favor allocating limited capacity to higher-margin AI orders. Apple’s risk has shifted from rising procurement costs to potentially being unable to obtain enough chips for products including the iPhone and Mac.