The Hardware Crisis: Why Your Next Laptop Will Cost 20% More

While everyone talks about how cheap it is to use ChatGPT ($20 a month, what a bargain), there’s a bill nobody’s looking at: hardware.

The numbers just came out, and they’re brutal:

RAM: +344% since September 2025
SSDs: +74-100%
HDDs: +46%
Laptops: +8-20% depending on manufacturer
Smartphones: +7-30%

The cause? AI data centers are devouring the world’s entire memory chip production. And there aren’t enough for everyone.

What’s happening

Between 2025 and 2029, $3 trillion will be invested in building AI data centers. Morgan Stanley estimates half of that investment will go to hardware.

To put it in perspective: each cutting-edge AI server needs obscene amounts of memory. A rack of NVIDIA H100 GPUs can carry more RAM than your entire office combined.

And memory manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) can’t ramp up production fast enough. Chip factories take years to build. Demand has exploded in months.

Result: shortage. And when there’s shortage, prices go up.

How it affects you

If you’re buying a laptop

That laptop that cost $800 in 2024 now costs $900-960. Same model, same specs. It’s just that the RAM and SSD inside cost the manufacturer much more.

High-end models (with more RAM and storage) are hit hardest. A work laptop with 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD may have gone up $200-300.

If you’re buying a phone

Mid-range and high-end smartphones will rise between 7% and 30%. A $600 phone could go up to $650-780.

Manufacturers have two options: raise prices or reduce specs (less RAM, less storage). You’ll probably see both.

If you work with servers

This is where it really hurts. Server hardware is in critical shortage. Lead times have lengthened. Prices have risen. And cloud providers are absorbing all available stock.

If your company needs to expand on-premise infrastructure, prepare for long waits and revised budgets.

If you build your own PC

Gaming enthusiasts and DIY builders are feeling it especially. A 32GB DDR5 RAM kit that cost $120 now costs $200-250. NVMe SSDs have risen proportionally.

The time to buy components was six months ago. Now you pay the “AI tax”.

The irony

Here’s what’s ironic: AI is sold as technology that “democratizes” access to advanced capabilities. Anyone can use GPT-4 for $20 a month. Amazing.

But that democratization has a hidden cost distributed among everyone. The data centers needed for you to chat with an AI are consuming resources that make all hardware more expensive.

It’s an invisible cross-subsidy. You pay $20 a month for AI, but you pay $150 more for your next laptop. And $50 more for your next phone. And so on.

When will it get better?

Not soon. Projections say demand for AI chips will keep growing exponentially until at least 2028-2029.

The new semiconductor factories being built (TSMC in Arizona, Intel in Ohio, Samsung in Texas) won’t be fully operational until 2027-2028.

Until then, the shortage continues. Prices stay high. And competition between AI data centers and the rest of the market continues.

Some signals to watch:

Positive: new factories coming online, more efficient memory technologies, slowdown in data center construction.

Negative: more AI investment (NVIDIA just put another $2B into CoreWeave), more mergers like SpaceX-xAI, more compute demand.

My bet: prices will stay high through 2026 and 2027. Possible stabilization in 2028. But don’t expect to return to 2024 prices.

What you can do

If you need to buy hardware soon

Buy now. Prices probably won’t drop in the next 12-18 months. If you can afford the expense now, do it.

If you can wait

Wait until 2028. I know it sounds like a long time, but if your current equipment works, there’s no rush. Prices should stabilize when new manufacturing capacity comes online.

If you manage IT budgets

Revise your projections. Hardware will cost more than you budgeted. Better to adjust now than get surprised later.

If you’re considering cloud vs on-premise

Cloud becomes relatively more attractive when hardware prices rise. Hyperscalers have long-term contracts with manufacturers that give them better prices. You don’t have that advantage.

But watch out: cloud prices are rising too. You don’t escape entirely.

The elephant in the room

Nobody talks about this at AI conferences. Nobody mentions it in product launches. Nobody includes it in ROI analyses.

But it’s real. AI has an infrastructure cost that’s being externalized to the rest of the economy. We all pay a little more for our hardware so AI data centers can be built.

I’m not saying it’s bad. AI has real benefits. But it would be nice if the complete cost were on the table, not hidden in the price increase of your next laptop.