The AI boom has transformed one of the semiconductor industry’s most cyclical businesses into one of its tightest markets. Memory chips, once plagued by oversupply and collapsing prices, have become one of the biggest bottlenecks for AI infrastructure.

Elon Musk said soaring memory costs are the "biggest price jump in anything I've ever seen" and that the solution is "MUCH higher production."

Apple memory shortage explained: how aggressive down-cycle pricing by big buyers may have triggered today's RAM crunch hitting your MacBook wallet.

As the global race for AI moves forward, a shortage of memory chips has begun to drive up prices of consumer electronics and may lead to product shortages.

Imagine you're 6 years old and in the back seat of your parents' car on a road trip. Your mum decides to stop for breakfast food at lunchtime and pulls into a quiet roadhouse where other travelers eat apple pie and drink cola with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Revenue quadrupled to $41.45 billion compared with the same period a year ago. The company's profit, meanwhile, rose from $1.88 billion to an incredible $28.2 billion year-over-year.

Shares of Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU | MU Price Prediction) are down 7% to $1,130 in early Friday trading. SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) is slipping 7% to $2,176, while Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) is declining 6% to $626.

As AI data centers consume a growing share of global memory supply, shortages of advanced memory chips are emerging as a critical constraint on AI deployment and industrial competitiveness. Policymakers must expand memory and packaging capacity to avoid future bottlenecks.

A quiet shift in memory can begin long before a diagnosis of dementia. These early changes often pass unnoticed, even as the brain slowly alters.

By Stephen Nellis, Zaheer Kachwala and Aditya Soni SAN FRANCISCO, June 25 (Reuters) - Memory chipmakers have for decades been trapped in boom-bust cycles, with capacity buildouts hitting the market just as demand craters.