Morgan Stanley lifts Q4 DRAM, NAND contract price forecasts; compute still top AI pick
A Morgan Stanley report raised its memory contract-price forecasts: Q4 2026 DRAM contract prices are now seen up 10–15% quarter over quarter (from +3–8%), with PC DRAM at +13–18% and server DRAM at +10–15%, while NAND moves to +15–20% from +0–5% and enterprise SSDs reach +23–28%. The bank forecasts 2027 HBM average selling prices up 121% year over year, with HBM4 at US$3–5 per Gb and HBM4e above US$5, but says Nvidia's Rubin ramp is behind schedule, with 2026 VR200 NVL72 rack shipments estimated below 10,000 units versus an original target of about 15,000. It keeps its AI supply-chain priority of compute first, networking second and selective memory allocation, and projects DRAM capex of US$98 billion in 2026 (+82%) rising to US$150–160 billion in 2027.
Memory and HBM pricing feeds directly into AI data-center build costs and the pace of compute supply, making it a leading indicator for inference economics.