NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI systems could trigger SSD shortages and price spikes

Analysts at investment bank Citi warn that NVIDIA’s new Vera Rubin server platforms, unveiled at CES 2026, may create a crisis in the consumer SSD market similar to the DRAM shortage at the end of 2025. The root cause is the enormous demand for NAND memory, which could lead to shortages and sharp price increases.

Why Vera Rubin consumes so much memory

Vera Rubin represents a new generation of NVIDIA accelerators optimized for AI workloads, especially inference of large models. To operate efficiently, they require vast amounts of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) to store query context and minimize latency.

However, HBM production is limited, expensive, and complex. At CES 2026, NVIDIA presented its Inference Memory Context Storage (ICMS) technology, which offloads part of the data onto standard SSDs. While this reduces the HBM requirement, it dramatically increases demand for NAND memory.

Citi analysts estimate that a single rack of Vera Rubin will need SSDs totaling about 1,152 TB (roughly 16 TB per GPU). If NVIDIA delivers 100,000 such systems by 2027, the total SSD demand would reach 115.2 million TB — about 10% of the global NAND market.

Parallel with the DRAM crisis

At the end of 2025, the DRAM market faced a severe shortage due to manufacturers prioritizing AI-related demand. DDR5 and other memory module prices skyrocketed, while consumer segments were left struggling.

A similar situation could occur with NAND memory. Leading manufacturers (Samsung, SK hynix, Micron) are already shifting production capacity toward HBM and server SSDs. If NVIDIA’s demand grows exponentially, consumer SSDs (for PCs, laptops, and external drives) may become scarce, with prices rising by tens of percent.

When to expect the impact

Initial Vera Rubin deliveries will start in 2026–2027. The large-scale effect on the NAND market is expected by 2027–2028, when systems are installed in the thousands. Citi notes that if NVIDIA’s plans materialize, this could become one of the most significant challenges for the consumer storage market in recent years.

In brief

NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin servers with ICMS offload part of the workload to SSDs, requiring massive amounts of NAND memory. Delivering 100,000 systems by 2027 would demand 115 million TB — about 10% of the global NAND supply. Citi warns this may cause shortages and price spikes for consumer SSDs, similar to the DRAM crisis in 2025, with effects hitting ordinary users in 1–2 years.

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