Chipmakers Rally as Nvidia Points to a Prolonged Memory Shortage

Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and other Asian chipmakers rallied on Friday following a bullish outlook from Nvidia, helping carry a Wall Street advance into Asian trading. MSCI's Asian equities gauge rose 0.8% after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 posted their best session since early August.

The driver is supply rather than demand. Nvidia has indicated that memory price increases are likely to persist and warned that shortages could run into fiscal 2028, a constraint on its own production that works in favour of memory producers able to sell into a tight market. Hyperscaler capital spending continues to expand, and custom silicon backlogs now stretch visibility several years out.

For AI hardware assemblers the picture is more mixed. Super Micro Computer reported fiscal 2026 net sales of $39.1 billion, up 78% year over year on AI server demand, with Nvidia GPU-based platforms accounting for more than 80% of sales. Sustained memory costs press on component pricing even as the underlying order book grows, and the stock has given back ground since a pivot high earlier this month.