By Ramish Zafar
Publication Date: 2026-05-23 16:51:00
NVIDIA CFO Collette Kress blames other firms for suffering in the ongoing memory shortage. In an interview with Tae Kim, Kress shared how her firm had ordered memory in advance as it understood that a price surge was imminent. The surge in memory prices due to high demand from AI chip companies has transformed the industry, with workers at companies such as SK hynix receiving hefty bonuses and those at Samsung protesting.
Others Should Have Ordered Memory A Long Time Ago, Says NVIDIA CFO
The high-performance requirements of AI GPUs have led to significant turmoil in both the high bandwidth memory (HBM) and DDR memory markets. Estimates suggest that the demand for NVIDIA’s Rubin AI platform alone is expected to exceed the memory demand of Apple and Samsung combined. Specifically, the Rubin AI chips can require as much as a whopping six billion gigabytes of LPDDR memory in 2027, while Apple is expected to require 2.9 billion gigabytes and Samsung 2.7 billion GBs.
Not only do AI GPUs also require DDR memory in addition to HBM memory, but since both are produced with the same machines, a bump in demand for HBM means that manufacturers allocate capacity away from DDR. The capacity allocation leads to shortages in the DDR market as well, with Chinese firms now believed to be eyeing this opportunity to establish themselves as key players in the market.
NVIDIA Knew Beforehand That Memory Prices Would Go Up, Says Kress
Amidst this…