For the third time this year, the price of SanDisk NAND contracts has skyrocketed by 50%

According to reports, SanDisk officially issued a notice to customers in early November, raising the price of NAND flash contracts by 50% for November. This is the company's third price adjustment this year and the largest one. The price increase immediately triggered a chain reaction in the storage supply chain, with module manufacturers such as Chuangjian, Yiding, and Yuzhan suspending shipments and reassessing quotes. Some companies have stopped quoting and delivering since November 7th.

SanDisk clearly stated in its recent earnings conference that, ChatGPT、 The demand for high-capacity and high-performance flash memory in AI applications such as large model traininis growing exponentially, and data centers are becoming the largest consumer market for NAND flash memory; The inability to rapidly expand upstream wafer production capacity has 

resulted in extended NAND chip delivery cycles and decreased inventory levels.

SanDisk CEO David Goeckeler stated during the earnings conference, 'We are experiencing an unprecedented wave of demand driven by the widespread adoption of AI.'. ”He predicts 

that by 2026, data centers will surpass mobile devices for the first time and become the largest application market for NAND.

After the news of price increase came out, storage module manufacturers quickly responded. Transcend has suspended quotations and deliveries since November 7th, with the official 

statement stating that "the expected market situation will continue to improve". Innodisk and Apacer have also followed suit and suspended shipments, waiting for prices to stabilize 

before re pricing.

Industry analysis points out that the 50% increase this time far exceeds the previous 10% price adjustments in April and September, reflecting the worsening supply-demand imbalance. 

A supply chain insider revealed that 'prices may continue to rise until they stabilize'.

SanDisk has raised its full year performance guidance in its latest financial report, predicting that the supply shortage of NAND products will continue until the end of 2026.

This price increase is not an isolated event. On November 3rd, Samsung had already temporarily suspended the DDR5 DRAM contract quotation, followed by SK Hynix and Micron, 

resulting in a 25% surge in DDR5 spot prices within a week. TrendForce has raised its expected price increase for general DRAM in the fourth quarter from 8-13% to 18-23%, and has 

indicated the possibility of further upward adjustments.

To meet the demands of AI workloads, SanDisk is accelerating the development of high-capacity, energy-efficient solid-state drives based on BiCS8 technology and is undergoing product 

certification with multiple large-scale cloud service providers. On the technological roadmap, the number of 3D NAND stack layers has exceeded 300, and the industry predicts that it may 

reach 1000 layers by 2030, further promoting the improvement of storage density and performance.

As the demand for memory chips in emerging fields such as AI, smart cars and edge computing continues to increase, the tight supply of NAND flash memory may be difficult to ease 

before 2026. Analysts point out that the price increase of storage modules and terminal devices is inevitable, and consumers and enterprise users need to be prepared for higher storage 

costs.