UBS projects that global HBM bit shipments will increase from approximately 2,500 million Gb in 2023 to approximately 55,000 million Gb in 2027, a roughly 20-fold increase in four years; HBM's share of global DRAM bit shipments will also rise from 1% to 12%. TrendForce's latest forecast is highly similar: HBM will account for approximately 8%, 9%, and 13% of DRAM bit supply in 2025, 2026, and 2027, respectively.
The truly crucial point is not the 12% bit share, but its impact on capacity utilization, which is far greater than 12%. TrendForce predicts that by the end of 2027, HBM will contribute only about 13% of DRAM bits, but will consume about 30% of DRAM wafer input, due to HBM chips being larger and having lower stacking and TSV yields.
Therefore, AI-driven increases in HBM demand will simultaneously compress the supply of ordinary DDR5, which is the core mechanism behind the current memory price surge spreading from HBM to server DRAM and even consumer-grade memory.
The risk lies in the fact that HBM demand remains highly dependent on AI GPU/ASIC shipments and per-chip capacity, and the price increase of regular DRAM is rapidly changing manufacturers' capacity allocation—TrendForce reports that in Q1 2026, the value per wafer for DDR5 64GB RDIMM even surpassed that of HBM. The report's more important signal is not that "HBM's share is increasing," but rather that a small amount of HBM is disproportionately occupying DRAM supply, amplifying the scarcity across the industry.
