The CEO of Nothing, a smartphone maker, recently warned that memory — the component that stores data and keeps apps running on your phone — has become the most expensive part to make. Carl Pei made this public on social media on 12 June 2026, citing his company's Phone 4A as an example.

Pei's post described a cost jump that is difficult to ignore. The memory cost for the Phone 4A doubled between when the device was designed and when it went on sale. Then it doubled again after launch. That is a fourfold price increase — in just months.

When a single part of a phone becomes four times more expensive, companies have three options. They can lose money by keeping the retail price the same. They can raise the selling price mid-cycle, which frustrates customers. Or they can put the cost into the next generation of phones. Nothing, which sells phones at competitive prices, faces a tough choice with none of these options.

Pei did not say whether Nothing has already raised prices or will. By announcing the cost problem publicly, he is essentially saying: any price increase you see is driven by supply and costs, not corporate greed. It is a way to get ahead of customer complaints.

What is causing this surge. Artificial intelligence is booming right now, and companies like Google and Amazon are building massive data centers to run AI. These data centers need special, high-speed memory chips. Phone makers also need memory for AI features running on your device. Both are competing for the same limited supply of memory from manufacturers. It is like two companies bidding for the same raw material — the price goes up.

A word of caution: Pei is one person at one company making a claim, and he has not released detailed cost breakdowns or named suppliers. His statement that memory is now the most expensive component is plausible, but it is based on Nothing's internal numbers. Other phone makers and supply-chain experts have not yet confirmed this across the industry.

However, the basic trend is real. Over the past several years, phones have shipped with more memory — more gigabytes to store AI models, handle camera features, and let you run more apps at once. A mid-range phone today has as much memory as a high-end phone did five years ago. More memory, at higher prices, adds up.

For phone makers building mid-range devices, this is a genuine problem. These phones drive most of the smartphone sales globally. If memory costs keep rising, companies either have to cut features or raise prices. Neither is a good option when you are trying to keep phones affordable.

The big question ahead is whether AI demand will keep pushing memory costs higher or eventually stabilize. Right now, prices are climbing. The same forces making AI a must-have feature are making phones more expensive to build.