NVMe SSDs Now Cost More Than Gold on a Per-Gram Basis

High-capacity NVMe solid-state drives have crossed an unusual threshold: on a per-gram basis, they are now more expensive than gold.

An 8 TB NVMe SSD typically weighs around 8 grams and is currently selling for close to $1,500, implying a price of nearly $187 per gram. By comparison, 8 grams of gold are valued at roughly $1,184, or about $148 per gram. While the comparison is symbolic, it highlights how sharply storage prices have moved.

The key driver is a global shortage of NAND flash memory. Production capacity for advanced NAND is largely sold out for 2026 after manufacturers cut output aggressively during the previous industry downturn. Demand has since rebounded faster than expected, leaving little flexibility in supply.

Growth in artificial intelligence workloads is a major factor. Data centers continue to expand storage capacity to support model training, inference, and large-scale data processing. At the same time, enterprise customers are shifting toward higher-capacity NVMe drives, which require more advanced NAND stacks and higher manufacturing precision.

Supply remains highly concentrated. NAND production depends on a limited number of large-scale manufacturers, and capacity expansion is capital-intensive and slow. This structure increases the risk that tight market conditions persist longer than in other segments of the semiconductor industry.

Another structural pressure comes from rising complexity. Modern NVMe SSDs rely on advanced controllers, dense multi-layer NAND, and sophisticated firmware, all of which raise production costs compared with earlier generations of flash storage.

While SSDs are not replacing gold as a store of value, the comparison underscores how strategically important memory has become in the modern digital economy. For enterprises, higher prices translate into rising infrastructure costs. For producers, the current cycle improves margins after several years of pressure.

Looking ahead, analysts expect NAND supply conditions to remain tight into 2026 unless demand slows materially or producers accelerate capacity expansion. Until then, high-capacity NVMe SSDs are likely to remain among the most expensive materials — gram for gram — in the technology supply chain.