Over the past two days, the AI hardware sector has emerged as the market's brightest theme. On March 18, the memory chip segment experienced a wave of limit-up gains, with stocks like Tongyou Technology and Zhongdiangang hitting the daily ceiling. On March 19, computing power concepts remained highly active, with Tongniu Information and Hongjing Technology both reaching new all-time highs, while Meili Cloud and Litong Electronics also surged to their upper limits. From memory chips to computing power, the AI-driven demand explosion is rapidly propagating through the industrial chain.
The immediate catalyst for this memory chip rally stemmed from warnings issued by two global industry giants. According to Reuters, the largest union at Samsung Electronics is voting on a plan for a potential strike in May, with approximately 90,000 members to decide whether to initiate an 18-day walkout starting May 21. Union leaders explicitly stated that production would be disrupted, indicating that if the strike proceeds, about half of the output from Samsung's Pyeongtaek semiconductor campus could be halted. As the world's largest memory chip manufacturer, any production volatility at Samsung would exacerbate the already strained global supply chain.
Simultaneously, SK Hynix Chairman Choi Tae-won cautioned at the NVIDIA GTC conference that due to systemic bottlenecks in chip production, the global shortage of memory chips is likely to persist until 2030, with the supply gap expected to remain above 20%. The combined impact of these announcements from the two memory giants has fully ignited market expectations of a supply crisis.
The price increase effect from memory chips is accelerating its transmission downstream, while the computing power sector is also undergoing a price revaluation. On March 18, Alibaba Cloud and Baidu Intelligent Cloud simultaneously raised prices for their AI computing power and storage products, with increases of up to 34%. Alibaba Cloud attributed this to the global explosion in AI demand and rising supply chain costs, which have significantly increased procurement expenses for core industry hardware. Baidu Intelligent Cloud also cited substantial increases in core hardware and related infrastructure costs, leading to price adjustments of approximately 5% to 30% for its AI computing power-related products and services.
The underlying driver of this round of price increases originates from the explosive growth of AI applications. NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang stated at the GTC conference that as AI applications expand from chatbots to AI agents capable of autonomous execution, global demand for AI computing power continues to grow rapidly. He noted that if companies can secure more computing power capacity, they can generate more "tokens," thereby increasing business revenue. Galaxy Securities believes that the popularity of OpenClaw is driving the migration of AI industry value towards "task completion capability," whose high-consumption characteristics have led to a surge in token usage, consequently bringing about structural changes to computing power infrastructure.
It is foreseeable that under the dual forces of exploding AI demand and supply rigidity, the price surge wave—from memory chips to computing power leasing—will persist. The AI hardware industrial chain is now entering a cycle of prosperity.