Market Context
DDR5 / Mobile Trend
↑ Grinding Higher
DDR5 16Gb spot averaged $58.00 on October 2 (DRAMeXchange), up from $57.67 a week earlier and still +480% YoY, though gains slowed to fractions of a percent ahead of China’s Golden Week. TrendForce sees mobile DRAM contracts still rising in 4Q26 but moderating off a high base.
DDR4 Spot Trend
↑ Fourth Straight Record
DDR4 1Gx8 3200 reached $46.32 on September 29 (TrendForce, +0.93% WoW), its fourth consecutive weekly tracker high, in holiday-thinned trading where “prices fluctuated within a narrow range.” Legacy supply keeps shrinking as capacity moves to server and HBM.
HBM Capacity
Booked Through 2027
Micron says HBM3E and HBM4 are fully booked through calendar 2027, with demand extending into 2028 and $32B of customer commitments under long-term agreements. The open question is no longer volume but price: Bernstein just cut its 2027 HBM pricing assumptions.
Supplier Sentiment
↑ Micron Cleared The Bar
Micron’s fiscal Q4 came in at $54.23B against a Street model near $50B, with a $61.5B guide. Korea’s September chip exports hit a record $60.3B (+263% YoY), and Samsung rose 2.8% on October 1. Last week’s gap between sentiment and fundamentals has closed, for now.
Price Trends$/GB — Trailing 18 Months + 18-Month Forecast
DDR5 ÷10
HBM3E ÷10
DDR4 ÷10
Shaded regions = optimistic/pessimistic confidence bands
DDR5, HBM3E and DDR4 all scaled ÷10 for legibility (actual: DDR5 ~$29/GB, HBM3E ~$32/GB, DDR4 ~$46/GB)
Sources: TrendForce, spot market indices, DM estimates
Spot PricesDRAM SKU Pricing — Week of Sep 28
DDR5 · 16Gb · 4800/5600 MT/s
$29.00/GB ($58.00)
▲ Up WoW
Prior week: $28.83
DRAMeXchange session average $58.00 on Oct 2 (+0.12% session; daily range $43.50–$69.50), up 0.6% from $57.67. The record still stands, but the pace is slowing into Golden Week.
DDR5 · 32Gb · 6400 MT/s
$29.21/GB ($116.84)
▲ DM Estimate, Higher
Prior: $29.05
DM estimate re-anchored to this week’s sourced DDR5 16Gb print ($58.00) at the same ~2.01x density premium ($116.84 chip). There is still no discrete 32Gb tracker print, so treat it as directional.
DDR4 · 8Gb (1Gx8) · 3200 MT/s
$46.32/GB ($46.32)
▲ New Record
Prior week: $46.11
TrendForce weekly spot: $46.32 on Sep 29, up 0.93% from $45.89 on Sep 23, the fourth straight weekly record. DRAMeXchange’s 8Gb DDR4 contract average also set a second straight record at $26 for September.
DDR4 · 16Gb (2Gx8) · 3200 MT/s
$46.01/GB ($92.02)
■ Carried Forward
Prior: $46.01
No fresh comparable-basis 2Gx8 print this week; TrendForce’s Sep 29 update gave no 2Gx8 figure, so the value carries forward. A third-party tracker snapshot (Sep 24) shows $82.10/die, under review against this basis.
LPDDR5X · Mobile · Q3 Contract
~$26.50/GB
■ Q4 Not Yet Printed
Prior: ~$26.50/GB
Q3 contract value carried forward; Q4 settlements are not yet published. TrendForce’s 4Q26 outlook (Sep 30) has mobile DRAM still rising but moderating, inside a conventional-DRAM contract forecast of +10–15% QoQ.
HBM4 · 36GB 12-High Stack
~$550/stack
■ Allocation Only
2026–2027 output committed
No merchant spot price (DM estimate carried forward). Micron now says HBM3E and HBM4 are fully booked through calendar 2027, and Bernstein’s lower 2027 HBM price assumptions argue against raising the estimate.
Supplier IntelSamsung · SK Hynix · Micron
S
Samsung
KRX: 005930
Samsung Electronics and five affiliates invest a combined $1B in Helix Digital Infrastructure, with $500M from Samsung Electronics, a step toward owning AI data-center capacity rather than only supplying it
Rises 2.8% to ₩276,000 on October 1 as Micron’s $61.5B guide and $32B of long-term-agreement commitments validate memory scarcity; its next report must show the same leverage
Korean export data for July–August show strong HBM signals from Samsung’s production site and weaker ones from SK Hynix’s, per Bernstein, suggesting Samsung’s HBM4 share is still rising
H
SK Hynix
KRX: 000660
Bernstein cuts its target to ₩2.7M from ₩3.3M (still Outperform) on more conservative HBM progress and pricing; U.S.-listed shares rose 2.87% anyway
Bernstein now expects HBM to stay less profitable than conventional DRAM through 2027 and pushes out its HBM3E-to-HBM4 transition timing on continued HBM4 supply difficulties
Shares fell about 6% on September 28 as OpenAI’s disclosed sandbox escape hit AI-hardware names across the SOX, before Micron’s print restored sentiment midweek
M
Micron
NASDAQ: MU
Fiscal Q4 revenue of $54.23B (+31% QoQ, ~+379% YoY), non-GAAP EPS of $33.42 versus $31.61 expected, and a ~87% gross margin; FY26 revenue of $133.2B, up from $37.4B
Guides fiscal Q1 to $61.5B ± $1.5B with non-GAAP EPS of $38.15, and discloses $32B of customer commitments under long-term supply agreements
Says HBM3E and HBM4 are fully booked through calendar 2027, with demand into 2028, and that it is building the industry’s first custom HBM with NVIDIA; FY26 capex was $27.4B
IndustryBroader DRAM & Memory News
Pricing
TrendForce’s 4Q26 outlook calls for conventional DRAM contract prices up 10–15% QoQ and NAND up 15–20%, and warns that PC DRAM supply could fall in 2027 as capacity shifts to server
A seventh-plus straight quarter of increases, with the burden moving down-market: server buyers on long-term agreements see increases that lag the average, while PC and consumer buyers absorb the shift. Budget 2027 client hardware on the assumption of no relief.
HBM / AI Demand
Anthropic’s IPO prospectus discloses ~$518B of compute and infrastructure commitments, including a $125.2B five-year TPU lease that Broadcom may finance with up to $42B of convertible notes
This is the clearest demand-side evidence yet for Micron’s “booked through 2027”: frontier labs are signing multi-year, multi-hundred-billion-dollar compute contracts, and every accelerator in them needs HBM. The risk has moved from demand to counterparty concentration and vendor financing.
Trade Data
Korea’s September chip exports reached a record $60.3B (+263% YoY), the first month above $60B and $13.6B above August’s prior record, lifting total exports to $120.9B
Higher prices and higher volumes together: the memory upcycle is now large enough to move a G20 country’s trade balance (a record $49.85B surplus). It is also the cleanest monthly read on Samsung and SK Hynix ahead of their October results.
Capacity Response
Samsung pledges ₩360 trillion (~$260B) for its Yongin semiconductor cluster and pulls the first fab forward to October 2029 from the second half of 2030
The supply response is real but slow. New greenfield capacity does not arrive until 2029, consistent with Micron’s view that the shortage may tighten through 2028. Near-term relief can only come from node migration and mix, not new fabs.
Sentiment Shift
Memory stocks swung from an AI-safety selloff on September 28 (SK Hynix −6%, Micron −4%) to a rally after Micron’s September 30 print, with Samsung +2.8% on October 1
Memory equities now trade on AI-lab headlines as much as on spot prices, a new kind of volatility. For buyers, the fundamentals did not change during the week; for investors, the drawdowns are coming from outside the memory cycle.