Memory chip shortage: AI takes 70% of global supply

Samantha: Welcome to The State of Tech, The European Edition, Friday July third, 2026. I'm Samantha Lawrence.

Bob: And I'm Bob Russell. Today: a memory chip shortage that's making everyday gadgets more expensive, Meta thinking about selling off its spare AI computing power, growing local resistance to new data centres in America, Germany opening a huge new chip factory in Dresden, and to close out, two things you can actually use today: the privacy-first email service Tuta Mail, and the open-source screen recorder Cap. Let's start with the story that's quietly reshaping the cost of everything you plug in.

AI data centres are swallowing seventy percent of the world's memory chips, and consumers are paying the price.

Samantha: We're kicking off with a shortage that's hitting phones, laptops, and just about every consumer gadget on the market. Memory chip prices are climbing sharply, and the reason is straightforward: AI data centres are consuming a stunning share of the global supply. Analysts now estimate that around seventy percent of all memory produced worldwide in 2026 will end up inside AI servers. Back in 2022, that figure sat somewhere between twenty and thirty percent. That is a dramatic reshuffling of who gets the chips in just four years.

Bob: And the mechanics behind it are worth spelling out. The big three memory makers, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, are shifting factory capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, the specialised stuff used in AI accelerators. It sells at higher margins and it's already sold out for the year. That means less capacity for the ordinary memory that goes into your laptop, your phone, your games console, your smart TV. So when you wonder why a mid-range phone suddenly costs a hundred euros more than last year's model, this is a big part of the answer. Analysts are calling it a near zero-sum game: every wafer bent toward AI is a wafer that doesn't become consumer memory.

Samantha: For European buyers this hits on two fronts. Household electronics are getting pricier at exactly the moment inflation was starting to ease, and European device makers, from car electronics to industrial equipment, are competing with hyperscaler wallets for the same wafers. Bosch, Siemens, Philips medical, they're all in that queue. And Europe still imports the vast majority of its memory chips, so there's very little local buffer.

Bob: There is one silver lining worth flagging. High memory prices tend to trigger a fresh round of investment in new fabs, and the EU Chips Act money is starting to flow into exactly that kind of capacity. But new memory fabs take years to build, so relief is not around the corner. In the meantime, expect device makers to quietly cut memory in entry-level products, or nudge people toward cloud storage instead of on-device storage. Bottom line: the AI boom is now visible on the shelf at your local electronics shop.

Meta considers selling off its surplus AI computing power, and Wall Street starts whispering about overinvestment.

Samantha: Story two, and it's a genuinely interesting shift at Meta. The company built enormous computing capacity to chase what it calls artificial superintelligence, and it turns out they may have built more than they can use themselves. Reports suggest Meta is now considering selling that surplus to outside customers, effectively launching a cloud business to compete with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Investors did not love the read-through. US chip stocks fell for a second day in a row, and the phrase getting thrown around is AI overinvestment, the idea that the industry has built more infrastructure than near-term demand can absorb.

Bob: What makes this more than a stock market story is the strategic message. Meta was one of the loudest voices arguing that you can never have too much AI compute. If even Meta is looking for outside buyers for spare capacity, that suggests the utilisation curve on all these new data centres is not as steep as the marketing decks implied. And a Meta cloud business changes the competitive map. The current big three could suddenly face a fourth serious player with deep pockets, custom silicon, and its own AI models to bundle in.

Samantha: For Europe there are a couple of angles here. European cloud providers, the likes of OVHcloud in France or Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems, have been arguing that a more diverse cloud market is good for European customers. A fourth hyperscaler could either help by pushing prices down, or hurt by making it even harder for smaller European players to compete. Regulators will also want a close look. The European Commission has been increasingly wary of concentration in cloud, and adding Meta to that list of gatekeepers is not a small thing.

Bob: And there's a broader European reading. If AI infrastructure oversupply becomes real, the enormous capital commitments some European governments are considering for sovereign AI could look very different. Building at the top of the cycle is expensive. Building just as prices come down is a different calculation entirely.

Samantha: Quick interruption. If you listen to The State of Tech regularly, hit that like button and subscribe, that way you'll never miss an episode. Okay, moving on.

Local resistance to new data centres in America is emerging as a real brake on the country's AI ambitions.

Bob: Third story, and it's an unusual one because the obstacle here is not a rival country or a shortage of chips. It's neighbours. Across the United States, local communities are pushing back hard on new data centre projects. The complaints are about electricity use, water consumption, land use and noise. What started as isolated protests is turning into a pattern, with permit denials, lawsuits, and moratoriums in states that were meant to be prime AI infrastructure hubs.

Samantha: And the numbers behind the pushback are eye-catching. A single large AI data centre can consume as much electricity as a mid-sized city, and can draw millions of litres of water a day for cooling. In drought-prone regions that is a very hard conversation. Local grids are strained, electricity bills for ordinary households are rising in some areas, and residents are asking the obvious question: who exactly benefits here? The answer, uncomfortably for the industry, is often a company headquartered thousands of kilometres away.

Bob: This matters strategically because the American AI story has been built on the assumption that the US can out-build everyone else. If local politics slows that build-out, the calculation changes. And it opens a door for other regions. The Gulf states are pouring money into new capacity. So is Southeast Asia. And Europe, of course, has its own ambitions.

Samantha: But Europe is not immune. The Netherlands and Ireland have both already seen backlashes against hyperscaler data centres. Amsterdam paused large data centre permits a few years ago. Ireland has grid constraints that regulators openly discuss. So the same social license question is very live here. The takeaway for European policymakers is that the physical footprint of AI is becoming as important as the algorithms themselves. Water, power and land are the new bottlenecks, and communities are noticing.

Germany's Infineon opens a five-billion-euro chip plant in Dresden, three months ahead of schedule.

Bob: Our fourth news story is a genuinely good day for European tech sovereignty. Infineon, the German semiconductor giant, has officially opened its new Smart Power Fab in Dresden. The facility cost around five billion euros, roughly five point seven billion dollars, and it opened three months ahead of schedule. That last detail matters, because European infrastructure projects have a reputation, sometimes deserved, for slipping. This one didn't.

Samantha: The plant will produce power management chips, the kind of chip that controls how electricity flows inside a device. They're the unglamorous cousins of the AI accelerators everyone talks about, but they're essential. Electric vehicles need them. Solar and wind installations need them. Home appliances need them. And yes, AI data centres need enormous amounts of them, because managing power at that scale is a huge engineering challenge in itself. Around one billion euros of the funding came from the EU Chips Act, so this is exactly the kind of project that framework was designed to deliver.

Bob: The strategic goal here is very clear. Europe wants to double its share of global semiconductor production by 2030. It currently sits around ten percent, and the target is twenty. Dresden is now one of the most important chip clusters in Europe, alongside investments from GlobalFoundries and a planned TSMC facility in the same region. The idea is to build a real ecosystem, not just isolated plants.

Samantha: There's a note of realism to add though. Power chips are important, but they are not the leading-edge logic chips that go into the newest AI processors. For those, Europe is still deeply dependent on Taiwan and South Korea. So the Chips Act is making genuine progress in the segments where Europe has strength, but the hardest gap, cutting-edge logic, remains open. Still, opening a five-billion-euro plant early is a good news day, and those are worth noting.

Tuta Mail is the encrypted European email service that keeps your inbox out of the hands of advertisers.

Bob: Right, closing out with two things you can actually try today. First up is Tuta Mail, spelled T-U-T-A. It's an encrypted email service based in Germany, and it's built specifically as an alternative to the big American providers. The pitch is straightforward: your emails, contacts and calendar are end-to-end encrypted, which means even the company running the service cannot read them. There's a free tier that gives you one gigabyte of storage and one email address, which is plenty for a secondary account.

Samantha: What makes Tuta interesting is that it's fully based in the European Union, so it operates under GDPR, and the company has been publicly critical of surveillance laws. There are apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux, plus a browser version, so it works wherever you are. Users often praise how clean the interface is compared to some other privacy-focused email tools, which have a reputation for being a bit clunky. If you've been looking for a way to separate your shopping newsletters and receipts from your personal inbox, this is a low-effort way to try it.

Bob: One practical tip that reviewers often mention: use Tuta as your secondary inbox first, for signups and newsletters, before you consider migrating your main address. That way you get a feel for the app without disrupting your daily life. Paid tiers start at around three euros a month if you want a custom domain or more storage, but you can genuinely get value out of the free version. Setup takes about five minutes.

Cap is the free open-source screen recorder that makes sharing quick videos genuinely painless.

Samantha: And our final pick is Cap, spelled just like the word. It's a free, open-source screen recorder that's been quietly gaining a following. The idea is very simple: you hit a shortcut, record your screen or your webcam, and get a shareable link within seconds. Think of it as an open alternative to some of the paid tools that people use for quick work explainers or bug reports.

Bob: What sets Cap apart is that it's fast and it doesn't lock your recordings inside a proprietary cloud. You can save locally, upload to your own storage, or use the hosted option if you want. Reviewers praise how lightweight it feels compared to heavier competitors, and it works on both Mac and Windows, with Linux support in progress. For anyone who sends screenshots back and forth all day trying to explain something, a fifteen-second video usually saves ten emails.

Samantha: Practical uses are everywhere. Teachers use it to record short lesson clips. Developers use it for bug reports. Designers use it to walk clients through changes. And because it's open source, there's no worry about a company suddenly changing pricing or shutting down. Download takes under a minute. Give it a try this afternoon.

Samantha: Today we covered: the memory chip shortage driven by AI data centres, Meta considering selling off surplus computing power, local resistance to data centres in America, Infineon opening its new plant in Dresden, and two things to try yourself: Tuta Mail for private email, and Cap for quick screen recordings.

Bob: Want to know more or react? Visit stateoftech.eu or email us at info@doorzetters.net.

Bob: State of Tech, the tech world in 15 minutes.