AI TRENDS | Memory Supply Remains Tight as AI Demand Has Not Peaked, Nomura Says

Nomura Securities said the global memory industry is still facing a severe supply shortage and that AI-driven structural demand growth has not yet peaked. According to Jin10, Nomura said recent investor concerns about oversupply were clearly excessive, and that the market’s overreaction may have created an opportunity to reassess valuations in memory-related stocks. Nomura said the market’s worries have been significantly exaggerated because the cycle from semiconductor investment to realized capacity is extremely long. It said South Korea’s investment plan of up to 4,800 trillion won would take at least five to 10 years to translate into actual capacity. Nomura also said that high-margin HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, is crowding out capacity for general-purpose memory, contributing to the severe supply shortage. The report added that Meta’s decision is not a turning point signaling reduced AI-related hardware demand. Instead, Nomura said a shortage of computing supply has been pushing up per-token prices, and Meta’s entry into the computing market is expected to help stabilize token prices at lower levels.