# Memory sales hit record $74.6B as AI demand surges, UBS reports > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 12:31:12+00:00 # Memory sales hit record $74.6B as AI demand surges, UBS reports DRAM and NAND segments both posted massive monthly gains as the AI boom creates a structural supply shortage that could last years The global memory chip market just had its best month ever, and it wasn’t even close. Monthly sales hit $74.6 billion in July 2026, a 31.7% jump from the prior month, according to the UBS July Memory Monthly report. The culprit, as with seemingly everything in tech right now, is artificial intelligence. The insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory to power AI workloads has turned the memory sector into one of the hottest corners of the semiconductor industry. ## The numbers behind the boom DRAM sales, which make up the larger share of the memory market, came in at approximately $48 billion. That’s a 27.7% increase from the previous month. NAND flash memory had an even more dramatic showing, surging 40.7% month-over-month to hit a record $25.8 billion. NAND is the type of memory used in solid-state drives and data center storage, both of which are seeing explosive demand as AI training and inference workloads scale up. UBS is projecting total memory industry revenues of $992 billion for all of 2026. By 2027, that figure is expected to nearly double to $1.76 trillion. The driving force is high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the specialized DRAM used in AI accelerators like Nvidia’s GPUs. UBS forecasts HBM demand to grow 90% year-over-year in 2026, reaching roughly 33.1 billion gigabytes. In 2027, demand is expected to climb another 77% to approximately 58.7 billion gigabytes. ## Why prices are climbing and won’t stop soon UBS sees DRAM as structurally undersupplied through at least Q2 2028. UBS has upgraded its DDR contract pricing forecasts to a 32% quarter-over-quarter increase in Q3 2026 and an additional 18% rise in Q4. NAND prices are expected to follow a similar pattern, with projected increases of 30% in Q3 and 12% in Q4. The three companies that dominate this market, Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, control the vast majority of global DRAM and NAND production. Micron achieved a market valuation of $1 trillion earlier in 2026, a milestone attributed to favorable AI market conditions. Samsung, which has lagged behind SK Hynix in the HBM race, is under enormous pressure to close the gap. Micron, meanwhile, has been aggressively positioning itself as a credible HBM supplier. **Disclosure:** This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our [Editorial Policy](https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/).