Along with memory chips A surge in market prices has led to improved profit expectations and soaring stock prices for A-share listed memory chip companies, heralding a "super cycle" for memory chips . Industry insiders believe this "super cycle" is driven by AI and data centers . The rapid growth in demand for high-capacity storage, coupled with the increasing penetration rate of smart terminals such as smartphones and smart cars, is driving this round of storage technology innovation and market expansion.
Looking ahead, analysts predict that the price surge in AI server storage products may continue until 2026. Domestic storage companies are expected to continue to benefit from the dual drivers of "price recovery + domestic substitution," coupled with the growth in consumer electronics ... With increased demand, the operating rates of domestic memory chip companies are steadily improving.
The surge in memory chip prices improves profit expectations.
Global memory chip prices have been rising steadily over the past six months. Global memory giants have recently issued another round of price increases. Samsung Electronics has notified major customers of a fourth-quarter price hike, planning to increase some DRAM prices by 15% to 30% and NAND flash memory prices by 5% to 10%. Micron, which temporarily suspended pricing for some memory chips in September, has seen new prices generally rise by about 20% since resuming. SanDisk... They also raised NAND flash memory prices in September by about 10%, affecting both consumer and enterprise products.
On October 14, Samsung Electronics announced its preliminary results for the third quarter of 2025. During the reporting period, its operating profit (on a consolidated financial statement basis) was 12.1 trillion won (approximately 60.521 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 31.81%; sales reached 86 trillion won, a year-on-year increase of 8.72% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 15.33%, setting a new record.
Industry price increases have brought optimistic profit expectations to listed companies in the domestic memory chip supply chain. Shannon Semiconductor, a core distributor of SK Hynix, is one such example. The company stated that the prices of its distributed and self-produced products are related to market conditions and supply and demand. The prices of its distributed products fluctuate with market prices, and these changes are ultimately reflected in purchase and sales prices. The prices of its self-produced products are ultimately determined by market competition and other factors. Regarding gross profit margin, the company's current sales and purchase gross profit margins are relatively stable, and the sale of inventory across periods during upward trends will improve the gross profit margin.
Demingli, a domestic SSD solution provider The company stated that current storage prices are influenced by factors such as supply and demand structure and emerging demands, resulting in a sustained upward trend in the industry overall, which positively supports the improvement of profitability for companies in the industry chain. The company's gross profit margin is affected by a combination of factors, including product selling price, procurement costs, and product structure. The company is continuously optimizing its product structure, strengthening supply chain management and refined inventory management, and promoting the rapid expansion of new businesses and markets to improve profitability.
Since October, Shannon Semiconductor and Biwin Storage have... Jiang Bolong GigaDevice Montage Technology Shares of memory chip concept stocks such as Shannon Semiconductor and Demingli have all hit record highs. From September 1 to October 20, Shannon Semiconductor rose by over 128%, Demingli rose by over 90%, and Jiangbolong rose by over 86%.
AI data centers drive growth in storage demand.
The memory chip industry is typically cyclical, and this round of price increases is seen by the industry as the start of a "super cycle." (Tianfeng Securities) Li Hongyi, a senior analyst in the electronics industry, told the Shanghai Securities News that the essence of this round of storage "supercycle" is a shift from "cycle" to "structure." Previously, price increases and extended delivery times in the chip industry were mainly due to short-term rebounds caused by supply-side production cuts. However, the current AI-driven "supercycle" has significant structural characteristics. The booming development of AI technology has driven rapid growth in demand for large-capacity storage in data centers , coupled with the increasing penetration rate of smart terminals such as smartphones and smart cars, jointly promoting this round of storage technology innovation and market expansion.
Earlier this month, Samsung Electronics signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to become OpenAI's strategic storage partner, providing semiconductors for OpenAI's "Stargate" project. Solution. OpenAI's monthly demand for memory chips is projected to reach 900,000 DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) wafers, and Samsung will assist in meeting this demand.
A representative from Biwin Storage told reporters that as generative AI moves from training to large-scale inference, North American cloud service providers (CSPs) are accelerating the deployment of high-performance inference infrastructure, driving a continuous increase in overall storage demand. Currently, North American cloud service providers handle hundreds of millions of AI service calls daily, and with the widespread adoption of multimodal models like Sora, the data volume per request has jumped from KB to GB, significantly increasing the demand for storage bandwidth and capacity. Against this backdrop, traditional HDDs (hard disk drives) are struggling to meet the needs of cold data storage due to tight delivery schedules and performance limitations, driving a rapid increase in SSD (solid state drive) penetration.
"On the consumer side, generative AI is rapidly extending to the terminal side, AI smartphones..." AI PC, AI Glasses The increasing demand for high-capacity, high-performance storage from smart devices is driving the growth of high-end storage products such as LPDDR5X, UFS 4.0, and PCIe Gen5 SSDs,” the spokesperson said.
The price increase trend for storage products may continue until 2026.
Entering the fourth quarter, the price increases for various storage products continue unabated. According to CFM Flash Market's recent Q4 2025 Storage Market Outlook report, server eSSDs are expected to see price increases of over 10% in the fourth quarter, DDR5 RDIMM prices are projected to rise by approximately 10% to 15%, mobile embedded NAND prices by approximately 5% to 10%, and LPDDR4X/5X prices by approximately 10% to 15%. For PCs, LPDDR5X/D5 prices are expected to increase by 10% to 15%, and cSSD prices by 5% to 10%.
According to TrendForce analyst Hsu Chia-yuan, in an interview with Shanghai Securities News, as North American cloud service providers release positive DRAM demand forecasts for the whole of 2026, it is expected to drive overall DRAM demand growth and price increases, with momentum continuing into 2026.
Regarding supply, Xu Jiayuan stated that SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron hold leading positions in the HBM, DDR5 RDIMM, and LPDDR5X product markets for AI server applications. Entering 2026, these three major manufacturers are expected to continue rapidly upgrading their production capacity to advanced processes while reducing the proportion of capacity from mature processes. For A-share listed companies, this will provide more opportunities to gain supply share among domestic cloud service providers or in the global market for mature process products.
Li Hongyi believes that with the training of large AI models and the construction of data centers becoming the core driving forces... Domestically produced memory chips are rapidly penetrating the enterprise market. Yangtze Memory Technologies' enterprise-grade SSDs are widely used in Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud. Domestic mainstream cloud service providers, among others. In the consumer market, domestically produced memory chips have rapidly gained market share due to their cost-effectiveness. Domestic memory companies are expected to continue to benefit from the dual drivers of "price recovery + domestic substitution," and the demand and operating rates of domestic memory chip companies are projected to show a steady recovery in the fourth quarter.
"The ramp-up of AI edge products will be the company's main growth engine in the fourth quarter, while enterprise-level products are also continuing to contribute to growth," a representative from Biwin Storage told reporters. The company has established a comprehensive product portfolio across LPDDR5/5X, eMMC/UFS, ePOP, and PCIe Gen4/5, which are widely used in emerging fields such as AI smartphones , AI PCs, AI glasses , and empathic intelligence. Meanwhile, its PCIe SSDs, CXL memory, and RDIMM memory modules for AI servers are progressing smoothly in validation with key customers and are expected to achieve large-scale adoption in the fourth quarter and next year.
Furthermore, the fourth quarter is traditionally the peak season for consumer electronics , featuring global promotional events such as "Double Eleven," resulting in a significant seasonal recovery in consumer electronics . According to the aforementioned representative, Biwin Storage's market demand in the fourth quarter continued to increase compared to the third quarter, and its Huizhou packaging and testing manufacturing base operated stably with production lines maintaining a high utilization rate. The base is currently undergoing capacity expansion, which will further enhance its supply capacity in the future.
(Source: Shanghai Securities) (Report)
