Chipmaker Lobby SEMI Urges White House to Reject Memory Market Interventions
Industry group SEMI has requested that the White House avoid regulatory interventions in the memory market despite rising costs for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and DRAM driven by AI data center demand. The organization suggests that tax incentives and long-term supply contracts are more appropriate tools to address current supply chain volatility than direct market interference.
Key Takeaways
- SEMI calls for federal tax credits to offset rising consumer hardware costs instead of direct DRAM price regulation.
- S&P Global projects vehicle-grade DRAM costs could increase 100% by the end of 2027 due to AI data center demand.
- Micron is committing $200 billion toward six new U.S. fabs and a $7 billion packaging facility in Singapore.
- SK hynix and Samsung aim to double memory capacity through a $584 billion South Korean manufacturing initiative.
- Industry forecasts project 19% annual growth in memory production capacity, yet supply is expected to lag behind demand.
Why It Matters
Immediate supply constraints on HBM and DRAM are forcing hardware OEMs like Apple to increase retail prices, directly impacting the margins of video streaming hardware providers. For the streaming ecosystem, these rising component costs threaten the affordability of consumer playback devices and the OpEx of server-side AI encoding. If the White House adopts SEMI’s recommendation for tax credits over price controls, the market will likely see continued price volatility capped only by the speed of global fab expansion. Watch for the U.S. Treasury’s response to these proposals during the next quarterly semiconductor supply chain review.
Additional Context
The pressure on memory markets coincides with a broader global race to secure AI infrastructure. According to Bloomberg in May 2026, the demand for HBM3E and HBM4 architectures has already sold out current production through the end of next year, leaving smaller players in the edge-computing and smart-TV sectors competing for leftovers. This scarcity is mirrored in the GPU market; per Reuters in June 2026, NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell-series chips remain on long backorders, further driving the desperate search for high-speed memory modules that can keep pace with these processors.
Simultaneously, trade tensions are complicating the supply landscape. The Financial Times reported in April 2026 that new export restrictions on specialized semiconductor manufacturing equipment have slowed the ramp-up of advanced DRAM nodes in non-aligned manufacturing hubs. In response, per The Wall Street Journal in June 2026, Japan and the European Union have accelerated their own subsidy programs—totaling over $80 billion in combined incentives—to attract the same Micron and SK hynix facilities that SEMI is currently defending from U.S. intervention.
Regulatory scrutiny is also intensifying beyond pricing. Per TechCrunch in late June 2026, the European Commission opened a preliminary inquiry into whether the tight-knit 'Big Three' memory makers are prioritizing specific cloud hyperscalers at the expense of regional enterprise markets. This political and regulatory climate makes the SEMI letter a critical preemptive strike for chipmakers hoping to maintain control over their high-margin HBM allocation strategies while securing lucrative U.S. investment credits.
Read full article at siliconangle.com
Enjoy our coverage?
Add StreamingMeme as a preferred source on Google to see more of our streaming news at the top of your Search results.
Add as preferred source