The news
Hardware makers from Nvidia (NVDA) to Raspberry Pi raised prices or shrank configurations on October 1 and 2, 2026, amid a memory shortage, with increases hitting desktop AI computers, single-board computers, phones and a streaming box.
On October 2, Nvidia announced a version of DGX Spark, its desktop AI computer built on the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, with 64GB of unified memory and a starting price of $4,999. Nvidia said it goes on sale on October 23 through Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP and MSI. The Register, which blamed soaring memory prices, reported the same day that Nvidia had raised the 128GB DGX Spark to $6,950, nearly 75 percent more than a year earlier.
By The Register's count, the new model has half the memory and storage of the original yet costs 25 percent more than the 128GB version did at launch. Nvidia's own announcement does not mention memory costs. It pitches the smaller unit as a building block: two 64GB systems can be linked to pool 128GB and run models of up to 200 billion parameters, the adjustable values that set an AI model's size.
Raspberry Pi said on October 1 that its 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now costs $67.50, up from $55, and its 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 costs $77.50, up from $65. Chief executive Eben Upton blamed memory, whose cost he said has climbed sharply for two years and is still going up. Prices of the 1GB boards and of the 2GB Compute Module 4 and 5 did not change. The Register noted the 2GB Pi 4 once sold for $35.
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) raised US prices for the Galaxy S26 line on Samsung.com on October 1, 9to5Google reported. The base S26 now starts at $999.99, the S26+ at $1,199.99 and the S26 Ultra at $1,399.99, each up $100, while the 1TB Ultra rose $200 to $1,999.99. Samsung did not give a reason, according to 9to5Google, which pointed to memory and component costs. On October 2 the outlet reported increases on Galaxy A phones too, including the 128GB Galaxy A57, which went to $599 from $549.
Nvidia also raised its Shield TV Pro, a streaming box first sold in October 2019, to $299.99 from $199, 9to5Google reported on October 2. It quoted Nvidia saying component costs, including memory, have risen substantially across the industry. The base Shield TV has been discontinued, the outlet said.
The numbers
- DGX Spark 64GB starting price
- $4,999
- DGX Spark 128GB price (The Register)
- $6,950
- 2GB Raspberry Pi 4
- $67.50, up from $55
- 2GB Raspberry Pi 5
- $77.50, up from $65
- Galaxy S26 US starting price
- $999.99, up $100
- Galaxy S26 Ultra 1TB
- $1,999.99, up $200
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro
- $299.99, up from $199
Why CEOs should care
For IT buyers, the main lesson is that a launch price no longer holds for the life of a product. Companies that standardize on one phone model or one developer workstation should expect quotes to move mid-cycle. Ask suppliers how long a quote is fixed, whether the price is locked for the full term of a volume order, and whether a lower-memory configuration has quietly become the default at the old price.
For CFOs drafting 2027 budgets, the increases are not small. By our calculation, they run from about 11 percent on the base Galaxy S26 to about 51 percent on the Shield TV Pro, and The Register puts the 128GB DGX Spark's rise at nearly 75 percent over a year. Hardware refresh lines built on 2026 prices are likely too low. Options worth costing out include buying ahead of planned refreshes, extending device life by a year, and checking how much memory each role actually uses before paying for more.
For technology chiefs funding AI work on local machines, the DGX Spark lineup shows the trade-off. The $4,999 64GB unit costs less up front but runs smaller models alone. Nvidia's answer is to link two of them, which at list price comes to $9,998 by our math, more than the $6,950 the 128GB unit now costs. Teams should compare that with renting cloud capacity and with rival systems; The Register said machines built on AMD's Gorgon Halo chips sell for less than the 128GB Spark, though it said Nvidia's GPU is much faster for AI tasks.
The bigger picture
The pattern is consistent across very different products. When memory is a large share of the cost of building a device, vendors either raise prices or ship less memory, and Nvidia's DGX Spark shows both. WhistleOut tied Samsung's increase to demand from AI data centers driving up the cost of memory and storage chips, and The Register cited Micron's chief executive warning that the shortage could last into 2028 or beyond. Raspberry Pi's Upton said the company hopes to reverse its increases once memory prices ease, but gave no date.
What’s next
The 64GB DGX Spark goes on sale on October 23, which will show whether partners such as Dell and HP hold the $4,999 starting price. 9to5Google said Samsung's Galaxy S26 FE and its foldable phones were not part of the October 1 change; whether they follow, and where Samsung prices its next flagship, will show how much further memory costs are moving into phones.
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