Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan: Memory Prices Up 5–7x, Worse in 2027

Tan’s warning is now moving money on two continents. Beyond the memory-stock rally, Taiwan’s Winbond signed a US$1.12 billion deal this week to buy Infineon’s NOR flash and F-RAM business — reviving the Spansion brand as a standalone Silicon Valley company — in a bid for automotive and industrial memory share as the shortage bites beyond mainstream DRAM and NAND. The consolidation logic is the same one driving Tan’s warning: with AI data centers absorbing wafer capacity and prices up five to seven times, every corner of the memory market has become a seller’s market. Micron, the largest U.S.-based memory maker, reports its latest results on September 30 — the next hard data point on how long the boom lasts.

If you have been putting off buying a new laptop or phone, hoping prices would settle down, the head of Intel just killed that hope in public. Memory chips — the stuff inside every phone, PC, and AI server — have climbed “between fivefold and sevenfold” in price, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week, and the bottleneck will get worse in 2027.

“Last year…I said memory was going to be the big bottleneck and that turned out to be the case and next year is going to be even worse,” Tan told an industry conference, as reported by Barron’s on September 17. Then came the line that should worry every hardware buyer in America: “You cannot have 70%, 80% of your cost coming from memory.”

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan alongside U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in August 2025. Photo: U.S. Department of Commerce, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What Tan actually said — and where he said it

Tan made the remarks at the AI Infrastructure Forum in Santa Clara, California, on September 15, where he was asked what problems he would like aspiring founders of AI infrastructure companies to solve. His answer: memory, power, and cooling.

“When I said early last year that memory could become a big bottleneck, I don’t think many people realized it. It actually happened, and the situation will get worse. Capacity is also very limited. Many projects are being delayed because they cannot secure enough memory, and memory prices have risen five to seven times. It is very difficult to secure memory when building mid- and low-priced phones or laptops.” — Lip-Bu Tan, quoted by the Seoul Economic Daily

That last sentence is the consumer one. It is not data-center operators who will feel this first — they can pay whatever it takes. It is the budget and mid-range devices, the phones and laptops most Americans actually buy, where memory already makes up so much of the cost that manufacturers either raise the price tag or quietly trim the specifications.

The comments echo a warning Tan made earlier this year. At a Cisco conference in February, citing conversations with two major memory executives, he said there would be “no relief until 2028” — a timeline that aligns with recent remarks from Micron’s own executives about tight supply conditions lingering for the foreseeable future.

Wall Street heard the same thing you did — and bought memory stocks

Tan’s warning landed as a reminder of how much money is on the table for memory makers. Micron Technology shares jumped 5.3% to $975.86 in Thursday afternoon trading, per Barron’s, clawing back ground lost the previous week on fears that the AI buildout was slowing. The Motley Fool put the gain at roughly 5.5% on the day, with shares around $977.50. American depositary receipts of SK Hynix were up 5.3% as well.

Those moves are just the latest leg of an extraordinary run. Micron’s share price has risen more than 200% in 2026, according to Barron’s, powered by what is effectively a seller’s market without precedent: fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $41.46 billion with an 84.6% GAAP gross margin, per the Motley Fool, and guidance of roughly $50 billion for the current quarter. Micron reports its latest results on September 30.

The analyst community thinks the run has further to go. KeyBanc’s John Vinh forecasts DRAM prices will rise 15–20% in the third quarter of this year and another 15% in the fourth, NAND flash will rise 30–40% this quarter and another 15% next, and high-bandwidth memory — the specialized DRAM that sits next to AI processors — will more than double in price next year. His price target on Micron implies roughly 90% upside.

File photo: Crucial DDR5 desktop memory modules. Crucial is the consumer brand of Micron, the largest U.S.-based memory maker, and the chips on modules like these have risen fivefold to sevenfold in price, according to Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Photo: Smial, Free Art License, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why memory became the tax on everything you buy

Memory is unusual among components: it is both indispensable and increasingly impossible to substitute. Every device needs DRAM to process data and NAND or similar flash to store it. And the AI data-center buildout has turned the world’s biggest memory buyers into, effectively, a single insatiable customer.

As production lines have been reorganized around high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, shortages have spread from cutting-edge server chips down to the ordinary memory in your laptop. HBM uses far more wafer capacity per unit than conventional DRAM, so every extra HBM wafer that goes to a data center is one fewer wafer making the memory that goes into phones and PCs.

Barron’s put the consumer consequence bluntly: some of Micron’s memory customers — especially those making lower-end smartphones and other devices rather than AI hardware — are already being forced to scale back their specifications or pass on price increases. Tan’s own framing was even sharper: when memory accounts for 70 to 80 percent of a device’s cost, something in the equation has to give, and it is usually the buyer’s wallet.

This is why the current shortage feels different from ordinary chip crunches. In past cycles, a shortage hit one category — processors, say, or graphics cards — while memory stayed cheap enough to keep systems affordable. This time the shortage is the memory itself. There is no cheaper substitute for DRAM. When memory is five to seven times its old price, the math of an entire product line breaks.

Intel wants back into the memory business

Buried in the market reaction is a strategic signal worth watching. Barron’s noted that Intel has already backed Kepler Compute, a startup developing an innovative memory-chip design — and Reuters reported this week that SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to build memory fabs in the US, though SK Hynix has said nothing has been finalized.

The interest is not subtle. Tan recently hired Seok-Hee Lee, the former CEO of SK Hynix, as executive vice president of Intel Foundry, and he has described new memory architectures as one of his “pet projects.” Intel abandoned the memory business decades ago — it sold its NAND operation to SK Hynix in 2021 — but the memory boom is profitable enough to make Intel reconsider what it gave up.

For consumers, more memory capacity would be genuinely good news. Every new fab — Micron is expanding its U.S. investment plan to $250 billion through 2035, per Barron’s — eventually means more supply and saner prices. But fabs take years to build and qualify, which is exactly why Tan’s “worse next year” warning rings true: the supply relief everyone wants is years away, while the demand is now.

What this means for U.S. buyers heading into 2027

The analysis, separated from the headlines: do not expect electronics prices to retreat any time soon. The memory spike is not a blip — it is the structural consequence of AI infrastructure absorbing wafer capacity that used to serve the consumer market, and the industry’s own executives now say the tightest period is still ahead.

For shoppers, the practical takeaways are unglamorous but real. Buy devices with the memory configuration you will need for their whole lifespan, because upgrading later will cost more. If you were considering a PC build or a phone upgrade, the trendline points in one direction, and it is not down. And watch the budget segment especially closely: when manufacturers cannot secure cheap memory, the entry-level devices most Americans buy are the first to lose features or gain dollars.

One hopeful note from Tan’s own portfolio of worries: alongside memory, he flagged electricity and cooling as the next major constraints, and said Intel is investing in technologies including liquid and microfluidic cooling. A company thinking that far down the supply chain is not betting on the crunch ending quickly — but it is at least planning for what comes after.

Memory shortage FAQ: will your gadgets cost more in 2027?

How much have memory prices risen? Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan says memory prices have risen five to seven times — “fivefold and sevenfold” — with memory now making up 70–80% of the cost of some mid- and low-priced devices.

Why will 2027 be worse? AI data centers have reorganized production around high-bandwidth memory, which consumes far more wafer capacity per unit than conventional DRAM. Demand is now, but new supply — fabs take years to build and qualify — is years away. Tan said at a February Cisco conference there would be “no relief until 2028.”

Should I buy my next phone or laptop now? The trendline points up, especially in the budget segment, where manufacturers trim specs or raise prices first. Buy the memory configuration you’ll need for the device’s whole lifespan — upgrading later will cost more.

When does the shortage end? Not soon. KeyBanc forecasts DRAM up 15–20% this quarter and 15% more in Q4, NAND up 30–40% this quarter, and HBM more than doubling in price next year.

Sources: Barron’s (Sept. 17, 2026), “Why Micron Stock Is Jumping as Intel CEO Warns on Memory Chips,” https://www.barrons.com/articles/micron-stock-price-intel-memory-chips-b0eca0f2; Seoul Economic Daily (Sept. 16, 2026), “Intel CEO Warns Memory Shortage Will Worsen, Prices Up 5 to 7 Times,” https://en.sedaily.com/international/2026/09/16/intel-ceo-warns-memory-shortage-will-get-worse; The Motley Fool (Sept. 17, 2026), “Why Was Micron Technology Stock Up Today?,” https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/09/17/why-was-micron-technology-stock-up-today/; TrendForce (Sept. 16, 2026), “Intel CEO Flags AI Supply Squeeze: Memory Prices Up 5–7x, Its CPUs Meet Just 50% of Demand,” https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/16/news-intel-ceo-flags-ai-supply-squeeze-memory-prices-up-5-7x-its-cpus-meet-just-50-of-demand/; Barron’s (Sept. 16, 2026), “Micron Faces New Threat to Its U.S. Memory-Chip Supremacy,” https://www.barrons.com/articles/micron-stock-price-memory-chip-threat-67929c3c; Digital Trends (Feb. 2026), “Waiting for memory prices to drop? Intel CEO says the shortage isn’t easing anytime soon,” https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/waiting-for-memory-prices-to-drop-intel-ceo-says-the-shortage-isnt-easing-anytime-soon/.