Artificial intelligence boom drives inflation in electronics prices

In the near future, AI (artificial intelligence) will produce such an abundance of goods and services that it will lead to deflation. In fact, within ten years, your money will have become meaningless because "anyone can have anything they can imagine." That's what Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, says.

For now, however, things are moving in the opposite direction. So-called hyperscalers —large cloud computing companies— are spending enormous sums to stockpile scarce resources used to train and operate AI systems. This is causing inflation.

Data centers consume huge amounts of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), which allows processors to operate at high speed, and flash memory, used in some types of storage. Manufacturers have moved into this lucrative market, shifting production away from traditional DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) used in consumer electronics devices.

Two of the three big HBM manufacturers are South Korean — Samsung and SK Hynix. Since September 2025, factory prices in the country have risen 445% for DRAM and 244% for flash memory, according to producer price indices. This increase is being passed on to other devices that use these components, such as cell phones and laptops.

In the United States, the consumer price index for "computer software and accessories" rose 31% over the same period, well above the 2.6% rise in general prices.

To measure the effect on different types of electronics, The Economist turned to Keepa, a platform that tracks prices on Amazon. We used your data to analyze the ten best-selling items across six electronics categories on the retailer's US website.

The results show increases in all categories since September 2025: laptop prices have risen by 20%, PlayStation 5 consoles by more than 30%, and pen drives by almost 100%. Only cell phones bucked this trend.

There are some caveats. Amazon may not represent the entire market. In addition, other factors specific to each category also affect prices.

The expectation surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6), a game that will be released soon, may be increasing the price of PlayStations. The best-selling cell phones on Amazon are old iPhone models, which are losing value — consumers are likely to buy the latest models directly from Apple.

The Donald Trump administration is also said to be considering tariffs on semiconductors, which could further increase the pressure.

The memory chip market has always been cyclical. Building new factories requires large initial investments and a lot of time, so supply reacts slowly to an increase in demand.

The current surge, however, appears unprecedented. Analysts expect the AI ​​boom to drive prices even higher.

The era of abundance predicted by Musk will have to wait.