Contract prices for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) will more than double next year, according to market research firm TrendForce.

The forecast, reported by the Seoul Economic Daily, marks one of the sharpest projected price movements in the memory semiconductor segment. HBM is the stacked DRAM technology used in AI accelerators and high-performance computing systems, and it now commands a central position in the memory industry's product mix.

TrendForce did not break the projection down into quarterly increments, but the headline figure — a more-than-100% increase in HBM pricing — points to sustained, severe tightness between supply and demand.

Why the number matters

Memory pricing is typically cyclical. Conventional DRAM and NAND contract prices move up and down by tens of percent per quarter in response to inventory levels and demand swings. A forecast that HBM prices will more than double across a single year sits well outside the normal range of memory price fluctuation.

For buyers — chiefly designers and manufacturers of AI servers and data center hardware — the projection signals a continued escalation in bill-of-materials costs for GPU-adjacent memory. For suppliers, it signals pricing power that conventional DRAM products have rarely delivered outside of acute shortage periods.

The supply side

HBM production capacity is constrained by manufacturing complexity. The stacked-die architecture requires known-good die, through-silicon vias, and advanced packaging capacity — all of which limit how quickly suppliers can add output compared with standard DRAM.

Suppliers allocating wafer capacity and packaging lines toward HBM do so at the expense of conventional DRAM production, a shift that has ripple effects across the broader memory market. TrendForce's forecast implies that this reallocation and the associated capacity limits will persist through next year.

What to watch

Three variables will determine whether the projection holds.

First, supply expansion. New HBM capacity additions from the major memory manufacturers — SK hynix, Samsung Electronics and Micron — will set the ceiling on how much product reaches the market next year.

Second, demand durability. The forecast assumes AI infrastructure buildouts continue at a pace that keeps HBM order books full. Any slowdown in accelerator procurement would pressure the price trajectory.

Third, generational mix. Newer HBM generations carry higher per-unit prices than older ones, and the mix shift between generations can move average selling prices independently of pure supply-demand dynamics.

Industry context

The projection arrives amid a period in which HBM has shifted from a niche product to a strategic one for memory makers. The three major suppliers have each committed multi-year capital expenditure plans toward HBM capacity and advanced packaging.

For system builders and hyperscale customers, the TrendForce figure provides a concrete planning assumption: budget for HBM memory costs that are at least twice current levels when negotiating next year's contracts.

The Seoul Economic Daily carried the report. TrendForce has not yet published the full forecast breakdown beyond the headline projection.