Cost of Al boom: PC prices set to rise as demand for memory chips soars

Up to 45% surge in prices of laptops and desktops expected through 2026

- Ovais Subhani Senior Business Correspondent

New technology comes at a price. While chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot are accessible for free, dues for the artificial intelligence (AI) boom will be paid through a different channel - more expensive electronic devices.

PCs are first in line, with prices of laptops and desktops set to rise by 15 per cent to 45 per cent through 2026. The higher end of the price range will be for custom-built, highly specialised desktops for demanding tasks such as high-end gaming, streaming and crypto mining.

Some of the world's biggest PC makers, such as Lenovo, Dell and HP, are likely to announce new prices within weeks, according to Taiwan-based TrendForce.

Surprisingly, the price surge is not driven by cutting-edge logic semiconductors that give computing power to devices.

Made by contract manufacturers such as Taiwan's TSMC, South Korea's Samsung Foundry and China's SMIC, logic chips stole the initial limelight amid the unprecedented Al infrastructure build-out.

Instead, prices are rising due to the dramatic spike in the cost of memory chips - semiconductors that store and process data - that hyperscale data centres soon realised were key to delivering the promise of generative AI at scale.

This is a win for Singapore's semiconductor industry, a critical node in the global chip value chain. The Government is also taking policy measures and investing heavily in research and manufacturing centred on AI innovation and other emerging technologies.

In January, the US' Micron Technology broke ground for Singapore's first high-bandwidth memory (HBM) advanced packaging plant worth US$7 billion (S$9 billion) in investment, putting the Republic on the global Al supply chain map.

Including Micron's HBM plant, the AI tailwind has brought more than $18 billion in research and development and manufacturing investments to the Republic's semiconductor ecosystem over the past two years.