If we turn the clocks back a year and a half, Microsoft’s leadership stood on stage and pronounced a new era of computing was upon us. They were right, though it’s not in a way anybody but AI evangelists would have preferred. Everything about the current RAM shortage and surging price of PCs is an irony baked into an irony. The one company that gave rise to OpenAI has worked so hard to push us into our current AI-obsessed tech landscape that it may have damaged the PC scene for the next several years.
Copilot+ PCs—first introduced in 2024—were never going to offer us onboard AI—not in the way the tech giants first proclaimed. Microsoft introduced its new class of AI PC in 2024 with a few specs restrictions. To gain access to new AI features like the much-maligned Recall, these PCs needed to have an NPU, an AI-focused chiplet called a neural processing unit, capable of running at least 40 TOPS, or trillions of operations per second. They also needed to have at least 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
📈 With memory prices rising in 1Q26, BOM pressure mounts for smartphone and laptop makers. As memory’s cost share grows, how will brands safeguard margins?💡More analysis from #TrendForce: https://t.co/TsS5h8Ni36 🔗
— TrendForce (@trendforce) December 11, 2025
However, the current RAM shortage will inevitably inflate the price of laptops with more memory. That means gaming laptops with at least 16GB and up to 64GB of RAM will cost way more. Last week, analyst firm TrendForce stated that low-end phones and lightweight notebooks would have to start downgrading specs just to maintain costs. Entry-level and mid-range laptops would have to start shrinking RAM down to 8GB. That could come at the expense of many features that depend on more memory. All those upcoming AI PCs sporting Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 and Intel Panther Lake may be squeezed between RAM prices and consumers’ ambivalence to any of these newfangled AI “features.”
Laptops are screwed because of memory prices
The major semiconductor companies are already promising more pain in the future. Micron, the third-largest memory semiconductor company behind Samsung and SK Hynix, sunset its consumer-facing Crucial brand to focus its efforts on AI. This move has only contributed to the memory crunch, and the company knows it. In its latest earnings call, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said, “We expect these conditions to persist beyond calendar 2026.” But don’t worry your pretty little head; the company’s Q1 revenue was up by 57% year-over-year.
PC component brand G.Skill blamed “unprecedented high demand from the AI industry” in a statement posted to its website this week. G.Skill is saying what we already knew. AI data centers are creating such high demand for high-end memory that major semiconductor companies are eschewing consumer brands for the sake of building up AI cloud compute. Microsoft itself promised to double its data center footprint over the next two years in the U.S. and across the world. That includes 200 planned data centers in Europe by the end of 2026. Microsoft has tried (and occasionally failed) to prop up new cloud computing sites in various places across the U.S., causing a surge in demand for electricity and water usage.
These companies are already cooked, but the laptop makers are next to feel the pressure. Next month, the entire PC industry is heading to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the annual CES conference. This is where these companies show off all the new products they intend to push throughout the year. I don’t expect we’ll know their prices right from the jump. The price of RAM will dictate how much more we would need to spend in 2026.
And if these laptops indeed sport less RAM, then what will become of Microsoft’s Copilot+ branding? Microsoft did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment. Either laptops will need to cost a lot more, or we may see far fewer laptops proclaiming their AI capabilities next year.
More RAM is always welcome, but it’s now becoming standardized. More apps are tuned for 16GB of memory, especially anything that requires graphics processing. If you haven’t tried doing any photo editing on an older 8GB model of an Apple MacBook Air, I wouldn’t recommend it. You also cannot expect to play any more recent games with only 8GB of RAM.
Apple only started sticking its MacBooks with a base 16GB of memory this past year, all thanks to the necessity for AI processing. That makes the $1,000 M4 MacBook Air truly the standout of Apple’s laptop design. We can’t guess what it will cost next year, but we can’t advise anybody to go out and buy an 8GB laptop in this day and age. And that will pose a big problem if anybody wants to sell new computers next year.
Microsoft is hurting itself for the sake of AI
In October, Microsoft pushed the idea that every Windows 11 device was now an “AI PC,” no need to go out and buy a new device. This was just around the time that the memory crunch was starting to take hold, when consumer DRAM prices started increasing by 50%, then 100%, and eventually 500% and beyond. Microsoft hoped consumers would start using their voice to communicate with their PCs using a new Copilot interface. The chatbot would be able to see everything you do on your computer screen, make suggestions, and even point to spots on your desktop when you need help.
However, few of these new or beta features turned out to be winners. Users who could access the early version of Copilot Vision found the feature would readily offer you bad advice and fail at simple tasks. Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot, a feature that’s supposed to act as a companion for when you’re stuck in games, is such a consistent liar that I would rather play blind than listen to any of its guesswork.
Microsoft isn’t done with promoting Copilot+ PC. The company showed off new Surface Laptops with built-in 5G connectivity in multiple regions earlier this year. Still, hardware isn’t the goal. Hell, neither is Windows, despite Microsoft pushing the millions of Windows 10 users to make the switch to 11. Microsoft’s top leadership is utterly absorbed with remaking the tech giant into an AI-first company, and that means pushing hard on company leadership to get on board. The new focus may even come at the cost of longtime officers like Windows lead Rajesh Jha. The VP of Microsoft’s Experience and Devices Group is reportedly eyeing retirement, according to several anonymous Microsoft execs who talked to Business Insider.
Microsoft’s global attempt to remake its business into an AI-first model will come at the expense of the over 1.4 billion monthly active users on Windows platforms. We don’t suggest you buy a new PC at any inflated price unless it’s absolutely necessary, especially if it’s a worse computer than you would have procured any year before now.
Read the full article here
