IT Procurement Update – November 2025

Supply Urgency

Exponential AI demand is challenging supply rivaling Pandemic levels. WBM has been monitoring this situation closely and based on the increasing component costs industry wide for memory and storage, we have been informed from multiple manufacturers that significant price increases will be implemented in January 2026.

Dell Canada Sales Team : “Anything shipping before December 19th, 2025, will be sheltered from the cost increases. After this date, all quotes will need to be refreshed.”

Lenovo Data Center Sales Leadership Team: “All current quotes will be honored for new purchase orders through December 6th, 2025 that will ship by December 31, 2025. All pricing on all valid contracts will be repriced by December 8th, 2025 for future orders”.

Memory Price Impacts

The current market situation is such that 64GB of DDR5 memory can now cost more than a PS5. This price increase is attributed to the global memory chip shortage and the surge in demand for AI-related technology. The prices for DDR5 RAM have skyrocketed, with a 64GB kit of DDR5-6000 now costing $599, which is more expensive than a PS5. This trend is expected to continue into 2026, impacting the cost of building and upgrading PC systems. Global memory chip shortage has caused the price of RAM and other components to increase by 20-50% with costs are fluctuating massively on a daily basis.

Server memory prices could double by 2026 as AI demand strains supply

DRAM prices have already risen approximately 50% year to date and are expected to climb another 30% in Q4 2025, followed by an additional 20% in early 2026, Counterpoint Research said in its report. The firm projected that DDR5 64GB RDIMM modules, widely used in enterprise data centers, could cost twice as much by the end of 2026 as they did in early 2025. [Network World]

At the same time, the firm also expected DRAM output to grow by more than 20% in 2026 as manufacturers ramp production but warned this may not be sufficient to offset AI-driven demand.
Enterprise buyers can already feel the impact. Procurement teams are facing price increases for servers, PCs, and smartphones.

The bigger risk on the horizon is with advanced memory, as Nvidia’s recent pivot to LPDDR means they’re a customer on the scale of a major smartphone maker — a seismic shift for the supply chain which can’t easily absorb this scale of demand,” MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, said in the report. [CounterPoint Research]

Nvidia reportedly raises GPU prices by 10-15% as manufacturing costs surge

A new report claims that Nvidia has recently raised the official prices of nearly all of its products to combat the impact of tariffs and surging manufacturing costs on its business, with gaming graphics cards receiving a 5 to 10% hike while AI GPUs see up to a 15% increase. [Tom’s Hardware]

AMD and Nvidia could axe budget gaming GPUs due to rising memory prices.

Memory prices have seen an astronomical increase over the past weeks due to strong AI-driven demand. Naturally, it was expected that the rising RAM prices would also impact gaming GPUs, resulting in price adjustments. However, it now appears that both AMD and Nvidia are considering taking drastic measures to lessen the impact of the GDDR VRAM price gain. [NotebookCheck]

AI is eating all the DRAM. DDR5 prices just doubled. GPUs could be next.

To AI buildouts, DRAM supply and future manufacturing capacity have already been bought out. SK Hynix, for example, a major DRAM manufacturer, said recently that “DRAM, NAND, as well as HBM capacity for next year has been sold out.“ [TechSpot]

Our Recommendation

If you have known technology requirements upcoming, WBM is now strongly recommending that you consider strategies to move these purchases forward to ensure pricing and availability.

Our Procurement Services Team has real-time inventory insights from all Tier 1 manufacturers and distributors in Canada, and we can work with you to provide managed inventory services and/or deferred leasing payment arrangements as required to facilitate any risk mitigation strategies you wish to pursue.

For assistance, please contact your WBM Account Manager or reach out directly to our Procurement Services team at 888-275-4926 or sales@wbm.ca. You can also check real-time stock availability via the WBM Direct procurement portal at wbmdirect.ca.

WBM is a local Western Canadian IT channel partner working to mitigate supply risks for our customer community. For any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact myself.

Sincerely,

Ashley Schell
Director, Strategic Procurement