Chinese DRAM makers could crash DDR5 prices by late 2027, ex-Samsung exec says
A former Samsung executive predicts Chinese memory manufacturers' capacity buildouts will end the current DDR5 price spike by H2 2027, with ChangXin Memory Technologies leading the charge.
A former Samsung chip executive told WCCFtech this week that Chinese DRAM manufacturers' aggressive capacity investments could crush the current 414% DDR5 price spike within a year, with relief likely arriving in the second half of 2027. The prediction hinges on whether Chinese fabs successfully scale output to flood the market with supply.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's largest domestic DRAM producer, posted a 1,688% profit surge in Q1 2026 and is plowing proceeds from a planned $4.2 billion Shanghai IPO into phase II wafer fabrication and next-generation R&D. The company is expanding monthly capacity from around 280,000 wafers to over 300,000 by late 2026, with an additional 30,000 wafers per month earmarked for HBM back-end packaging at a new Shanghai facility. CXMT is also pushing advanced DDR5 nodes to compete with Samsung and SK hynix on AI-server memory.
The timeline matters for practitioners watching RAM costs. If Chinese fabs hit their 2026 capacity targets and yield ramps proceed on schedule, the oversupply could arrive in H2 2027—just as next-generation inference workloads demand 192GB+ consumer boards. The former Samsung executive's caveat: the price drop depends entirely on execution, and any production stumbles would keep DDR5 prices elevated into 2028.