TrendForce estimates that DRAM contract prices will rise about 20% quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to IT之家 and a 36氪 brief citing 财联社. That pace is slower than the roughly 80% increase the research firm cites for the second quarter and about 40% for the third quarter, though DRAM prices remain high in a cycle of tight supply and strong demand. IT之家 attributes the increase mainly to expanding AI inference demand, with larger models, longer context windows and growing KV cache needs pulling up server DRAM and enterprise SSD capacity and bandwidth requirements while memory makers prioritize high-end products such as HBM. The slower pace is put down to an already high price base, weaker end-market purchasing power and price ceilings in some long-term procurement agreements; IT之家 also reports that Nvidia is considering cutting Rubin Ultra's HBM stack count from 12 to 8 layers due to tight HBM supply.