Adata chairman Simon Chen told Taiwan’s Commercial Times that the global DRAM shortage is likely to last another decade, a forecast that would keep pressure on PC makers, server buyers, and anyone else trying to buy memory without getting mugged by the contract market.
Chen’s comments followed a selloff in Taiwanese stocks after TSMC reported record second-quarter results. According to Commercial Times, the decline revived investor concern that spending on AI infrastructure has run too hot. Chen rejected that reading and said discussion of an AI bubble is premature.
Adata, which sells memory modules and storage products, expects DRAM contract prices to rise another 20% to 30% in the third quarter, according to the report. It also expects NAND flash prices to increase 35% to 40% in the same period. Those are not abstract numbers for buyers: contract pricing feeds into the cost of RAM, SSDs, servers, and the parts list behind AI data centers.
Chen told Commercial Times that electricity, especially green power, and memory will be the two resources in shortest supply globally over the next 10 years. His argument is that AI demand should not be judged by short-term capital spending swings or by whether one cloud provider has spare compute capacity to rent out.
He specifically pushed back on the idea that Meta and other cloud companies leasing unused capacity proves the industry has overbuilt. Chen said AI workloads will spread through corporate systems, government services, and consumer products, according to the report. That is a broader claim than the current data-center buildout, and it is also the part investors have to take on faith until the applications and revenue show up.
Chen pointed to robots, autonomous vehicles, unmanned factories and stores, smart homes, and low-Earth-orbit satellites as future sources of demand. Commercial Times reported that he described those edge-device markets as potentially reaching tens of billions of units. He also said the industry could revisit the bubble debate after 2030 and discuss whether an AI bubble might happen in 2040 or 2050.
Memory producers are still adding capacity, though Chen argued that the additions will not be enough to loosen the market soon. The report cited SK hynix raising a record $26.5 billion in a U.S. IPO this month to expand high-bandwidth memory manufacturing, Nanya planning to quadruple capital spending to $6.2 billion in 2027, and China’s CXMT reportedly nearing Micron-scale DRAM output this year.
Chen’s view is that the largest memory suppliers learned from previous crashes and will expand more carefully than they did in earlier boom cycles, when excess capacity helped crush prices. He also said Chinese manufacturers remain limited by restricted access to semiconductor equipment and by the long timelines required to build fabs.
Adata has its own exposure to the price cycle. By late February, the company had accumulated more than NT$30 billion in chip inventory. It was also among Taiwanese module makers that raised about $880 million through debt and share placements to keep buying chips. Rising contract prices increase the value of that inventory, so Chen is not a neutral referee in this market.
Commercial Times reported that Chen expects prices and module-maker profits to keep rising through the second half of the year. He said the current talk of easing supply and demand lacks a firm basis.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
