Here’s something slightly annoying.
You might never subscribe to ChatGPT. You might not care about Copilot. You might disable every AI feature on your phone.
And somehow, AI may still make your next laptop more expensive.
Yep.
The reason is not the AI button manufacturers keep adding everywhere. It is what is happening much further up the supply chain.
AI data centres need ridiculous amounts of memory and storage. Servers running AI workloads consume huge quantities of DRAM, high-bandwidth memory and enterprise storage. Naturally, chip manufacturers go where the money is.
And right now, AI infrastructure is where the money is.
TrendForce says memory manufacturers are prioritising server demand, which is squeezing supply available for ordinary PCs and smartphones. It expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 13–18% in Q3 2026, with NAND Flash up 10–15%.
Guess who eventually pays for that?
Us.
Your 16GB Laptop Is Competing With an AI Data Centre
Obviously, your MacBook or gaming laptop is not literally fighting Nvidia servers for the exact same RAM stick.
But manufacturing capacity is limited.
When Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and others see massive demand from data centres, production naturally shifts toward the higher-value market.
That creates an interesting side effect.
AI companies buy more infrastructure.
Infrastructure consumes more chips.
Chip supply gets tighter.
Laptop and phone manufacturers pay more.
Then we walk into the shop and wonder why the new model suddenly costs RM500 more.
TrendForce has already warned that higher component costs are flowing into notebook prices, while smartphone makers are also expected to increase retail prices because of expensive mobile DRAM.
Great.
So now AI has a tax.
And This Is Before We Even Use the AI
This is the funny part.
You may eventually buy a more expensive laptop partly because of the AI boom...
...then spend the first ten minutes turning off the AI features. 😂
Of course, AI itself is not the villain here. Technology demand has pushed component prices around many times before. Crypto did something similar to GPUs.
But it is another reminder that technology trends have consequences far beyond the product being advertised.
AI is changing software, cybersecurity, data centres, energy consumption and now potentially the price of ordinary hardware.
And once AI agents actually start doing things on our devices, there is another issue entirely: what access should we give them? I wrote about that separately in The Real Risk of AI Coding Agents Is Not Intelligence. It Is Permission.
So when your next phone launches at RM5,499 instead of RM4,999, don't be surprised.
Somewhere in a giant data centre, an AI server may have eaten your RAM budget.