The Hope Of A Drop In Prices Before 2030 Has Just Died

Micron has just signed 16 multi-year contracts at floor prices with its largest customers, which run until 2030. The RAM shortage is no longer just cyclical: it is now contractually guaranteed.

For thirty years, the memory market ticked like a slightly broken clock: shortage, soaring prices, manufacturers building new factories, overproduction, collapsing prices, new shortage. And so on, with the reassuring regularity of a capricious metronome. The RAM buyer knew that he just had to wait for the bottom of the cycle to renew his configuration cheaply. Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, has just declared that those days are over.

16 contracts, 100 billion dollars, and prices blocked until 2030

By revealing its results for the third fiscal quarter of 2026 ($41.5 billion in revenue, up 346% year-on-yearwhich says a lot about the scale of the current cycle), Micron announced the signing of 16 strategic agreements with its biggest customers. The mechanism is that of so-called take-or-pay contracts: customers undertake to purchase a minimum volume of memory over the period 2026-2030, at prices between a floor and a ceiling. If they don’t reach the promised volume, they still pay. In exchange, they secure their supply. In total, the whole represents around 100 billion dollars in guaranteed minimum income, to which are added 22 billion in financial commitments already secured, including almost 18 billion in liquidity.

This device changes the very nature of the market. Until now, a manufacturer like Micron could see its revenues drop by 60% in two years if demand turned around. These floor price contracts ensure historic margins whatever happens on the spot market. For the 16 signatory customers (four very large buyers, three medium-sized and nine automobile manufacturers), this is the assurance of never running out of stock. For someone buying a PC at the end of the chain, it’s a completely different story.

Towards a normalization of current prices

In France, a 32 GB DDR5 kit which was priced at 70-90 euros in September 2024 had climbed to 300 euros minimum in spring 2026 on the main online stores, or three to four times more expensive in eighteen months. Manufacturers like Asus and Acer pass these increases on to complete PCs, with additions of around 15 to 20% depending on the range. Micron itself anticipates tight market conditions beyond 2027; the contracts signed this week give a structural reason to be skeptical even about this timetable.

Read also: After RAM, the price of processors risks increasing, and it’s still the fault of AI

The only variable likely to relieve the low end is the arrival of Chinese memory. CXMT, a manufacturer until now confined to its domestic market, is starting to appear among assemblers like Corsair, with performances presented as comparable to SK Hynix in gaming use. But its position on U.S. export control lists remains unclear. The basic mechanics do not change: as long as AI data centers absorb most of the world’s production, mainstream DDR5 makes do with the crumbs.

If you need memory in the coming months, buy what you need now and don’t bet on a future drop. The 16 contracts signed this week have just transformed this expectation into a very long-term bet.