Memory deficit for AI: analyst predicts tenfold growth in shares of manufacturers
Demand for AI memory is outstripping supply so much that, according to independent analyst Zeitgeist, shares of leading manufacturers could increase tenfold from current levels. The key factor is not just the growing number of users, but a fundamental change in the structure of resource consumption: the shift from simple chatbots to complex AI agents.
Each accelerator, whether the H100 or newer models, has a fixed amount of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). The H100 has only 80 GB, while the B300 has up to 288 GB. However, the problem is that each AI agent session consumes huge amounts of memory. For example, one session with a context of 128,000 tokens consumes about 20 GB. This means that just four such sessions completely exhaust the resources of a single H100.
The Agent Revolution and "Explosive" Demand
The shift from simple queries to AI agents that independently access tools and accumulate context is radically changing the landscape. One knowledge worker running ten such agents in parallel already requires about 152 GB of memory. Considering there are about 250 million such workers worldwide, and each will use hundreds of agent sessions per day, the demand for memory is not just growing, but "explosive."
According to Zeitgeist's calculations, with one hundred agent sessions per person per day, the world would need approximately 60 times more memory than will be produced in 2026. Yes, attention mechanisms may eventually reduce the load by 4-8 times, but the growth rate of demand is incomparable: context windows are expanding from 128,000 to 10 million tokens, and AI usage per worker is going from zero to hundreds of sessions.
Manufacturers such as Micron and SK Hynix physically cannot ramp up production fast enough. A telling example: a $50,000 investment in Micron shares last September would be worth approximately $489,000 today.
My expert opinion: The AI memory market is at a unique bifurcation point. If the agent paradigm becomes mainstream, as I predict, the HBM shortage will become structural, not cyclical. In this scenario, a tenfold increase in the market capitalization of industry leaders is not an optimistic forecast, but a conservative estimate. Investors should closely monitor the pace of adoption of agent solutions — this is the main trigger for the sector.