Phison CEO Predicts Persistent NAND Flash Shortages Driven by Multi-Decade AI Boom

Phison CEO Khein-Seng Pua stated that NAND Flash manufacturers expect significant supply shortages to persist through next year. He emphasized that generative AI is still in its infancy after just four years, predicting it will drive semiconductor demand for the next 20 to 30 years. As foundry giants like TSMC scale up AI chip production, memory consumption for both DRAM and NAND Flash will surge proportionally across data centers and consumer hardware. This indicates the semiconductor market is entering a long-term structural expansion rather than a brief cyclical surge. Pua pointed out that while cloud AI is booming, on-device AI has not yet fully taken off, promising even higher memory requirements in the future. Additionally, he views the recent slowing pace of memory price increases as positive, preventing consumer hardware prices from rising too rapidly and harming long-term demand.