Summary
Counterpoint Research estimates that global DRAM revenue rose 369% year on year in Q3 2026, driven mainly by higher prices. Samsung led the market with a 38% share as demand for AI and data-centre memory increased.
Counterpoint Research estimates that global DRAM revenue rose 369% year on year in Q3 2026, reaching nearly $200 billion. Its Q3 Global Memory Tracker attributes the surge mainly to higher memory prices amid strong demand from AI accelerators and data centres. Samsung led the market with a 38% share; SK hynix’s revenue grew by more than 40% quarter on quarter.
Prices drove revenue faster than shipments
The gap between revenue and shipment growth is central to Counterpoint’s account of the quarter. The firm says DRAM bit shipments rose only about 4% during the quarter, while average selling prices (ASPs) reached $1.9 per gigabit (Gb). A gigabit is a measure of memory capacity; ASP is the average price received per unit sold. Counterpoint says the rise in ASPs, rather than a comparable jump in the quantity of memory shipped, was the main driver of revenue growth.
The report describes the market as a pricing-led cycle. It says price increases slowed from the steep rises in the first half of the year, but prices continued to climb. For memory buyers, higher prices can raise the cost of building servers and other devices even when the amount of memory supplied grows more modestly.
AI demand is reaching beyond accelerator memory
High-bandwidth memory (HBM), used alongside AI accelerators, is one source of demand. Counterpoint says HBM revenue almost doubled in Q3, but its share of total DRAM revenue fell because conventional DRAM grew faster. The firm points to demand for DDR and low-power LPDDR memory in server systems as another driver: it reports year-on-year revenue growth of 500% for DDR and nearly 400% for LPDDR.
That mix matters because AI computing uses memory across more than the accelerator itself. Counterpoint says the GPU-to-CPU ratio in cloud AI computing has narrowed from 4:1 to 2:1 and is trending towards 1:1. It also cites NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin rack as an example, reporting that CPU DRAM per socket rises almost threefold to 1.5 TB compared with the previous generation.
Samsung’s 38% share kept it in first place in Q3. SK hynix grew faster sequentially and recovered some share lost earlier in the year, while Counterpoint says Micron also benefited from AI data-centre demand. The firm expects rising prices and new HBM generations to support further supplier revenue growth next quarter. It also forecasts that Samsung could take the top position in HBM next year, saying its HBM4 is being well received by customers. These are Counterpoint’s market estimates and outlook, rather than completed results for future quarters.