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Fueled by the explosive growth of the artificial intelligence industry, demand for GPUs and other computing hardware has surged dramatically — and with it, the demand for memory. Western Digital’s affiliate SanDisk has already raised the contract price of NAND flash chips by 20% for November 2025, yet even at these higher prices, supply still falls short of demand.
However, the AI boom has affected far more than just NAND flash. These companies also require vast quantities of hard drives for data storage, and as a result, the delivery cycle for mechanical drives has stretched to nearly two years — meaning that orders placed today will not be fulfilled until late 2027.
According to reports from DigiTimes, most AI companies are unwilling to wait two years for new hard drives. Consequently, data centers and AI operators are turning to solid-state drives (SSDs) instead. To control costs, many of them are opting for QLC NAND-based SSDs — which offer higher capacity at lower prices — rather than the faster and more durable TLC NAND models.
Industry analysts predict that surging demand for QLC-based SSDs from data centers in China, the United States, and Canada could soon lead to a shortage of consumer-grade SSDs, with QLC NAND sales potentially surpassing TLC NAND by 2027.
Some users may wonder what connection exists between enterprise QLC SSDs and consumer TLC SSDs. The link is simple: rising demand drives up prices. As manufacturers shift more production capacity toward high-volume enterprise QLC models, the output of consumer TLC drives becomes constrained — inevitably resulting in reduced supply and higher retail prices.
For now, SSD prices have not skyrocketed to the same extent as memory chips. In recent weeks, DRAM prices have surged by over 50%, and reports suggest that even major AI data center operators in China and the U.S., despite offering premium prices, are receiving only about 70% of their allocated DRAM supply.
The AI boom is also reshaping the broader hardware landscape — from CPUs and memory to high-speed networking and large-scale storage arrays. Ultimately, this unprecedented wave of demand may ripple through to the consumer hardware market, pushing prices higher across the board — a trend that could persist for several years to come.
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