The global semiconductor memory shortage triggered by the AI boom is far worse than most companies currently realise and could last well beyond 2028 despite massive investments in capacity expansion, a top industry executive said, warning that Indian firms risk being caught unprepared.
“We're already in that state where the aggregate demand is very far above aggregate supply…at levels that I have not seen in my career,” Sumit Sadana, executive vice-president and chief business officer at Micron, told ET in an interview. “There is no physical way to supply the demand that all of our customers have.”
The situation is expected to worsen as global technology giants aggressively lock in capacity, he added. The comments come as AI infrastructure demand is reshaping the global memory industry, pushing suppliers such as Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix into one of the tightest supply environments the sector has seen in decades.
High-bandwidth memory (HBM), the advanced memory used in AI servers, has emerged as a major bottleneck globally as hyperscalers race to secure future supply. And this worsening global crunch poses a unique hurdle for India. While the domestic market is expanding rapidly, local buyers have historically been highly price-sensitive and hesitant to sign rigid procurement contracts.
Micron warned that a lack of concrete planning could leave local players entirely empty-handed. "I worry that our customers in India may not be understanding the gravity of the situation as much as I would like them to,” Sadana said.
“It is difficult to get reliable signals for longterm demand from a lot of our customers in India. Because at this point, we just don’t need an indication of demand, we need a commitment to that demand. And oftentimes we see that that commitment to that demand over long periods of time is just difficult to come by in the Indian context.”
The warning comes as India pushes aggressively to build sovereign AI infrastructure, local data centres and semiconductor manufacturing capabilities under the government’s semiconductor mission. Boise, Idaho-headquartered Micron Technology is the sole major American manufacturer of computer memory and data storage products, and is positioned as one of the global big three in the memory ecosystem alongside South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
It designs and manufactures foundational technologies including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), NAND flash memory, and solid-state drives (SSDs) that power everything from consumer smartphones and personal computers to complex automotive systems andenterprise data networks.
