Phison is one of the leading makers of controller chips for SSDs and other flash memory devices โ and CEO Pua Khein-Seng has now become a leading voice for just how bad the RAM shortage might get.
Companies may need to cut back their product lines in the second half of 2026, and some companies will even die if they canโt get the components they need, he agreed, in a televised interview with Ningguan Chen of Taiwanese broadcaster Next TV.
While the interviewโs entirely in Chinese, friends of The Verge stepped forward to confirm parts of a machine-translated summary thatโs been making headlines. They also note, importantly, that itโs the interviewer asking whether companies might shut down or product lines might discontinue. Khein-Seng largely just agreed and clarified that itโll happen if these companies cannot secure enough RAM.
He also adds that he expects people will start fixing products more often when they break, instead of throwing them in the trash, over the next couple years.
Itโs genuinely possible that some companies wonโt be able to secure enough RAM. AI data centers are gobbling up the vast majority of the worldโs memory supply as part of a global buildout, creating an unprecedented imbalance in supply and demand thatโs seen RAM prices triple, quadruple, or even sextuple over the past handful of months. Even Nvidia might skip shipping a gaming GPU for the first time in 30 years. Even Apple may have trouble securing enough RAM now, not to mention memory chips for SSDs, and other vital components.
The RAM shortage may affect everything that computing touches over the next several years, as only three companies control 93 percent of the entire DRAM market, and while those three companies are building more facilities, they donโt want to build too fast. All three have decided to prioritize profits instead of risking overproduction that could lose them money later.
Tomorrow, February 19th, Iโll have a report on The Verge about how โRAMageddonโ will affect you, even if youโd never think to buy a stick of memory yourself.
