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Analysis

February 9, 2026

AI giants are racing to secure shrinking memory. It’s creating opportunities for startups

Memory components have seen on-going shortages and price hikes, spiking investor interest in startups developing new approaches to the problem


Memory, a part which stores data and is separate from GPUs, is needed to train AI models, and it is fast becoming a scarce resource. Credit: Micron

The AI race is usually framed as a scramble to secure as much compute capacity as fast as possible in the form of graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips specialised for AI produced by US tech giant Nvidia.

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Daphné Leprince-Ringuet

Daphné Leprince-Ringuet is a senior reporter for Sifted, based in Paris. She covers French tech and writes Sifted's AI and Deeptech newsletter . You can find her on X and LinkedIn

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