🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Sandisk’s pricing power still needs proof

• The staying power of Sandisk’s forecast 65–67% gross margins needs to be tested.
• For that test, industry-wide NAND (a type of flash memory) bit supply growth must be reviewed, along with capacity plans such as wafer starts (how many silicon wafers chipmakers begin processing).
• The speed of technology transitions must also be weighed.
• A split in spending is already being set. Kioxia/Sandisk’s 41% investment increase is being planned, while Samsung and SK hynix/Solidigm’s NAND Flash spending is expected to be reduced or capped as attention shifts to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) 1.

Higher NAND prices push buyers toward storage efficiency tools

• Rising prices that lift Sandisk’s results also push enterprise IT teams and cloud operators to cut storage bills.
• Software vendors and infrastructure investors can sell tiered storage software, data reduction tools, plus archiving products that place data where it fits and shrink overall footprints.
• Hyperscalers such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft feel this pressure most. Their worldwide data center capital expenditures rose 59% year over year in 3Q 2025, according to Dell’Oro Group (a technology market research firm) 2.
• These cloud providers already aim for tighter capital expenditure discipline and better asset depreciation and lifecycles, which makes them ready buyers for efficiency tools 2.