Major Memory Module Manufacturer Says: 'trust Me, We're Not

'If you're going to buy memory, now might be a good time,' says Patriot marketing manager as prices still haven't peaked.

Having written about games and hardware for over a decade, believe me when I say an even slightly candid interview is a rare treat. As such, Kyle Hansen's live-streamed, down-to-earth chat with memory manufacturer Patriot's marketing manager Shannon Robb about all things system memory was a particular delight during CES 2026.

As entertaining as Robb and Hansen's well-established rapport is, the full 40-minute interview is also eye-opening. For a start, while we already know AI is a big reason why we're experiencing a supply crisis, Robb eloquently communicates the sheer scale of the industry's hunger for memory. He puts it in stark terms for Hansen, "The AI companies bought, like, 40% of the wafer production. We're not even talking finished goods, like, packages—not even chips. They're just wafers."

And what's even wilder is that a lot of that stock may not even be in active use, instead hoarded in storage as the industry struggles to find sufficient power to fit out functional data centers. Robb later adds that companies like Patriot aren't the reason for the sky-high RAM prices consumers are seeing, echoing similar comments recently made by Micron. He quips, "Trust me, we're not laughing our way to the bank with that because we've got to pay to get these parts."

He also says, "We literally just have to get what we can get. Make it work, and obviously the market price—because [of how] supply and demand works—that goes up and we have to pay it," before going on to later elaborate, "The key driver of price right now is the IC components, which we can't do nothing with."

To be clear, Patriot is a module manufacturer in the memory space, not a chip manufacturer. There are precious few of those, which is one of the reasons prices are spiking. The likes of Samsung, Micron, and key Patriot supplier SK Hynix are responsible for making most of the actual integrated circuits (ICs) that go into the market's memory modules.

But in such a challenging landscape, Patriot has no plans to make like Micron and pivot away from the consumer memory market and focus on serving the data center community. Robb offers, "The market is eventually going to correct. It's just a matter of when. And the fact is we're here to stay. We've been here, Patriot, we're on our 41st year."

That said, Robb shares that he doesn't believe we've yet seen memory prices pea

Source: PC Gamer