Over the past two years, the growing popularity of artificial intelligence has reshaped the global electronics supply chain. As you have probably noticed, the demand for memory and storage components is now affecting the prices of Raspberry Pi boards.

The core issue is that there has been a massive surge in demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), traditional DRAM, NAND flash, and even hard drives. Manufacturers are reallocating capacity toward AI and enterprise customers, leaving less available for consumer markets.

RAM and SSD Costs

Over the last several months, memory prices have spiked significantly, with RAM and SSD costs rising sharply as manufacturers prioritize lucrative AI infrastructure contracts. Even hard drives are being snapped up. In early 2026, Western Digital reported selling out its supply of hard drives for the entire year due to enterprise and data center commitments.

SD Card Costs

Many of today’s AI systems rely heavily on NAND flash storage, putting pressure on the same supply chains that produce SD cards. Prices for some cards have doubled already, and this trend is expected to continue.

Raspberry Pi Prices

Boards like the Raspberry Pi are being affected by these market trends.

• There have already been price increases for Raspberry Pi boards, with memory-heavy versions such as the 16 GB Pi 5 seeing steep increases. 
• Raspberry Pi has acknowledged that memory supply pressures are creating uncertainty around pricing and availability.
• Market observers note that memory makers have diverted DDR4 and DDR5 module production toward AI applications, tightening what’s available for single-board computers.

What You Should Do

Because the market forces driving these price increases are at the enterprise level, there's not a lot that consumers have control over. This means that if you are a maker, hobbyist, or Raspberry Pi enthusiast, the best thing you can do is to stock up on the things you need before prices get even higher.

From our perspective as a supplier of electronics hardware, these are the things we'd expect to increase in price over 2026:

• Raspberry Pi 5 boards (especially higher-memory versions)
• Raspberry Pi SSD
• SD Cards
• Raspberry Pi AI HAT

When Will Prices Come Back Down?

One of the biggest questions any Raspberry Pi user might have is when prices will decrease. The very short answer is this - either the demand for AI will have to slow down, which is unlikely, or the global output of electronics manufacturing will have to increase to compensate for the high demand. Until either one of those things happens, we would expect prices to continue increasing.