Apple used to be among a few companies willing to buy memory and other components worth billions of dollars under long-term supply contracts at fixed prices. But the artificial intelligence era represents a new reality with new purchasing champions, marking a tectonic shift in the high-tech world. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have purchase commitments totaling about $2 trillion, and a significant portion of these commitments are for memory, according to estimates by analyst Claus Aasholm. While the commitments are approximate, span many years, and should be generally taken with a grain of salt, they still reflect the direction the industry is moving.
Combined purchasing commitments from the four major hyperscalers shown in the chart —Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft — reached nearly $2 trillion by Q2 2026, with Alphabet and Microsoft accounting for the overwhelming majority of the total.
The rapid expansion suggests several major findings. Firstly, the AI infrastructure race is accelerating, not stabilizing. Secondly, AI infrastructure investments are driven by a handful of hyperscale cloud service providers (CSPs) whose long-term procurement commitments now vastly exceed those of traditional consumer electronics companies such as Apple.
Latest Videos FromTom’s Hardware
Thirdly, memory has become a strategic asset — perhaps a competition weapon — rather than a commodity. Fourthly, suppliers of memory — both 3D NAND and DRAM — are gaining pricing power. Finally, demand for memory will likely drive major capacity expansion at Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix, even though so far these companies have been exceptionally disciplined about their capacity investments.
Almost $2 trillion commitments
Google shows by far the most aggressive increase in purchasing commitments, rising from roughly $140 – $150 billion in Q3 2025 to around $811 billion by Q2 2026 (though these are total purchase commitments by Alphabet, not specifically memory purchase commitments), while Microsoft follows a similar trajectory and reaches approximately $678 billion in total obligations, which includes, but is not limited to memory.
Meta is also ramping commitments substantially to around $349.3 billion (again, these are total commitments), whereas Amazon increased its commitments more gradually to roughly $130 billion. By contrast, Apple — which makes the world’s most popular smartphone, and which was the largest consumer of memory just a couple of years ago — remains almost flat throughout the period at approximately $57 billion (of which $56.2 billion is payable within 12 months). Apple’s commitments fall well short of Nvidia’s commitments of $119 billion.
Memory suppliers used to buzz around Apple like fruit flies, but now they have discovered larger commitments.Apple’s purchasing commitments have not changed, suggesting a reluctance to follow the new market rules.https://t.co/0pRbk8aYVJ pic.twitter.com/t2VNm7uw1dAugust 6, 2026
Again, we are talking about total purchase commitments, which include foundry capacity, 3D NAND, and DRAM memory, but are not limited to them. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all build custom silicon and custom servers, so a significant portion of these commitments is to various EMS providers.
While $1.968 trillion of purchase commitments for memory and storage alone would be an absurdly large amount of money, a huge portion of these commitments consists of contract manufacturing obligations as well as memory chips. This suggests that the foundry, 3D NAND, and DRAM markets are entering a new phase in which hyperscalers are willing to make vastly larger forward purchasing commitments than traditional consumer-electronics companies, giving suppliers a strong incentive to prioritize customers prepared to secure future capacity on that scale.
Strategic assets
While Claus Aasholm’s chart is explicitly dedicated to memory, it does describe total purchase commitments of tech giants, so the chart can reasonably be read as evidence that memory and capacity at TSMC, Samsung Foundry, and GlobalFoundries are becoming a strategic asset rather than merely another component to procure at the best available price.
AI infrastructure requires enormous quantities of AI accelerators, DRAM (including HBM), and 3D NAND. Meanwhile, the supply of high-end memory (HBM) is constrained by fab capacity at major DRAM makers, whereas the supply of AI accelerators is constrained by both wafer capacity and foundries and packaging capacity at foundries and their OSAT partners. As a result, hyperscaler CSPs have an incentive to lock in supply years ahead, even if doing so requires exceptionally large purchasing commitments.
That also changes the relationship between semiconductor suppliers and their customers. In theory, a company willing to guarantee hundreds of billions of dollars of future purchases can effectively help underwrite expansions of foundry, memory, and advanced packaging capacity and, in return, secure priority access to scarce products and future process technologies. In reality, TSMC can well afford capacity expansion using the money it gets from hyperscalers and give priority to its largest customers. In this environment, access to DDR5, HBM, and 3D NAND memory becomes part of the competitive advantage rather than merely a procurement exercise.
This is also what makes Apple’s position in the graph interesting: its purchasing commitments barely move while those of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft surge. If the trend continues, Apple may remain one of the world’s largest semiconductor buyers in absolute terms, but the question is whether it will be among the key customers that foundries, memory makers, and OSATs plan their future capacity expansions.
An inflection point
Perhaps the most interesting takeaway of the findings revealed by long-term purchase commitments is that the industry’s center of gravity appears to have shifted.
During the smartphone era, foundries (well, TSMC has won) and memory suppliers often competed aggressively for Apple’s business because of its enormous purchasing power. Today, hyperscalers building AI infrastructure are making purchasing commitments that dwarf those of traditional CE companies like Apple, which may well represent a strategic inflection point akin to the one Andy Grove described in his ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ book.
Will this tectonic shift result in prioritization of customers capable of enabling future capacity expansions through massive long-term purchase agreements, or will foundries and memory makers remain more or less disciplined with their capacity expansions so as not to lose a lot when demand declines? This is a question that has yet to be asked.
In any case, the AI megatrend has transformed semiconductors — from foundries to advanced packaging and from DDR5 to HBM4 — into strategic assets that can no longer be treated as ordinary components procured on demand. And this is something that will continue in the long run.
