Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are in talks with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to secure long-term supply agreements for DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory. The companies aim to support the expansion of their AI data centers, which currently have a combined pipeline exceeding 24 GW.
The Chinese firms are seeking contracts extending until 2035, significantly longer than the industry standard of 3–5 years. To ensure a reliable supply, they are reportedly willing to pay premiums, as US hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Meta have already secured much of the available capacity.
Data indicates that 70–80% of the 2027 production capacity from Samsung and SK Hynix is already committed to existing agreements. Samsung intends to allocate at least 70% of its total memory output to long-term contracts.
ByteDance is developing 5.3 GW of AI data center capacity, while Alibaba and Tencent are working on 3.9 GW and 2.4 GW, respectively. Beyond memory, these three companies have recently placed orders for Nvidia GPUs totaling more than $35 billion.
