Back to school aisle. Same laptop as two years ago. The price tag isn’t the same at all.
Blame the memory, not the laptop. AI data centres are now absorbing an estimated 70% of the world’s computer memory chip output. Three companies make more than 95% of the DRAM produced on the planet, and every one of them has pointed its factories at the high margin server memory that AI systems need, which shoves the cheap consumer memory going into a $700 machine to the back of the line.
The Numbers Behind the Sticker Shock
Conventional DRAM contract prices climbed 90% to 95% in the first quarter of this year alone. A 12 gigabyte low power memory module went from roughly $77 to roughly $146 over the second quarter. A 512 gigabyte SSD rose 54% in three months flat. Gartner has memory prices up around 130% by the end of 2026, and expects that to drag PC prices up about 17% and phone prices up about 13% compared to last year.
Here’s the part that should stop you cold. Older DDR4 memory, the cheap stuff nobody wanted anymore, now costs more per gigabit than the newer memory built specifically for AI accelerators. Read that again. The outdated part costs more than the advanced one. That’s not a market working the way markets are supposed to work.
Nobody Voted for This Bill
Nobody in Grande Prairie or Red Deer signed up to pay more for a school laptop because a server farm in another country needs chips. That’s the deal though. Every country on earth is paying this at the till right now, whether it has a single AI data centre inside its borders or not. The bill shows up the same either way, quietly stacked onto a receipt nobody thought to question.
Alberta Actually Collects Something Back
Here’s where it turns around, and it runs both directions at once. Alberta is one of the few places on the planet actually collecting something on the other side of this arrangement. Municipal taxes on the data centres themselves. A computing equipment levy. Construction payroll running through Sturgeon County right now. A rule that says the operator funds its own power instead of leaning on the shared grid.
Most of the world is paying the bill and getting no cheque back. Alberta wrote itself into the side of this arrangement that actually collects. That’s not an accident. That’s a government that read the fine print before signing.
Is the AI build worth what it’s doing to the price of an ordinary laptop?
