SanDisk to double price of 3D NAND for enterprise SSDs in Q1 2026 — hyperscalers to pay top dollar for storage as AI continues to roll

Sandisk is on track to double the price of its high-capacity 3D NAND memory devices for enterprise-grade solid-state drives this quarter in anticipation of strong demand for server-class storage in the coming quarters, reports Nomura Securities (via @jukan05). It is unclear to what degree the price increase of high-capacity 3D NAND will affect quotes on mainstream flash memory used in client devices, but normally, 3D NAND for smartphones and PCs follows enterprise-grade chips as they are made at the same fabs.

"Channel checks indicate that several memory suppliers continued to push prices higher, with enterprise-grade NAND facing especially aggressive increases," a note to clients by Nomura Securities reads. "SanDisk’s NAND used in enterprise SSDs is cited as potentially rising by more than 100% quarter over quarter in the March period."

Nomura Securities, which is among the prominent financial analyst firms with good contacts in the high-tech industry, attributes plans of memory suppliers to increase prices of enterprise-grade 3D NAND both to short-term shortages and to mid-term growth of demand driven by AI in general and changes to AI storage in particular.

Nomura names Nvidia's Inference Context Memory Storage Platform (ICMSP) — which is based on the BlueField-4 DPU equipped with a 512 GB SSD that carries KV cache — among the demand drivers for enterprise storage this year. Every compute tray in the VR NVL144 rack is equipped with a BlueField-4 data processing unit with a 512 GB drive, making it 18 DPUs with 9.216 TB of 3D NAND per rack. Assuming that Nvidia ships 50,000 VR NVL144 racks per annum, the company will have to get roughly 0.439 EB of 3D NAND somewhere. Its partners supplying their versions of VR NVL144 racks with BlueField-4 DPUs will also increase their consumption of 3D NAND memory this year with the Vera Rubin platform.

While Nvidia's ICMSP can consume around an exabyte of 3D NAND per annum in 2026 ~ 2027 in the best case scenario, it cannot really be a reason for 3D NAND price doubling overnight, as the industry produces over 800 EB of NAND every year. Meanwhile, we still do not know how much 3D NAND a typical VR NVL144 machine carries, so we cannot estimate storage demands for Rubin-based platforms in general.

Nonetheless, as demand for AI systems for storage is skyrocketing in general, they will inevitably drive up demand, and once it outpaces supply, prices will get higher, which is exactly what we are seeing today.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.