A sharp rise in computer memory prices, combined with increasing AI token costs, is putting fresh pressure on businesses, according to Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu.
Vembu was responding to a report that showed memory prices rising by as much as 500% over the past 12 months. Some DDR5 RAM kits are now priced at nearly 10x their lowest recorded levels. He said companies have so far avoided passing these higher costs on to customers, but maintaining current prices is becoming increasingly difficult.
“Memory prices, along with AI token prices have made business very difficult. We have held back from raising prices but it is becoming hard,” Vembu wrote in a post on X.
Historical pricing data showed that a 64GB DDR5-5600 kit, which averaged around $191 in August 2025, was priced at about $1,118 in August 2026. This represents an increase of about 485%. A 128GB DDR5-6400 kit was recently listed at $3,399, compared with its lowest tracked price of $329.
The increase is also affecting DDR4 memory. Prices across the tracked DDR4 kits have risen by about 120% to 177% year-on-year.
Vembu also argued that rising memory costs could force changes in software development. He said programming languages and software tools need to become more memory-efficient as it becomes more expensive.
“A techncial note: for a long time, programming languages were designed with the assumption that memory is ‘free’. That era has now ended. We need highly memory efficient languages and smarter compilers, even for AI to use,” Vembu wrote.
He added, “Safety of code and productivity in writing code cannot come at the expense of memory bloat. That is my area of research.”
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