The lack of memory is not only not getting fixed next year, it will probably last much longer. That is what Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, said. In an interview, he said that supply problems with DRAM and HBM will get worse in 2027, as AI data centers around the world take up a big part of the production. And there is little room to move, because factory capacity cannot be expanded overnight.

For Dell, the problem is not demand. Dell has a pile of undelivered AI server orders worth about $95 billion, the biggest in its history, and what is holding back those shipments is memory.

AI accelerators need large amounts of HBM, the high-bandwidth memory that feeds data to the computing units, while the rest of the server still depends on regular DRAM. If either one is missing, the whole machine stays unfinished.

As you can imagine, building a memory factory takes around four years, so the plants being built will not reach full production until 2029 or 2030. With that timeline on the table, Dell thinks an easing of the market in the short term is unlikely.

But he is not the only one who sees it this way. We already reported that Micron’s CEO has said supply will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than this year. Also, SK hynix is talking about a shortage that lasts until 2030. As you can see, the general view in the industry is that there is a memory crisis for a long time.

To limit the money risk, the company has changed how it manages its warehouse. DRAM is bought as close as possible to the final assembly of each system, so there is no money stuck in stock that can take a while to turn into sales. At the same time, Dell wants to secure access to these parts with long-term supply contracts, though it has not said how far this plan also reaches its consumer products.

Anyone building their own PC has felt the effect of all this for months, with memory prices through the roof. In fact, as the sources point out, Dell itself raised the prices of its computers by 15% to 20% at the end of last year, and this month it is the turn of monitors.