Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance Discuss Long-Term DRAM Supply Deals

Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance are among large Chinese cloud providers discussing long-term server memory supply deals with Samsung Electronics and SK hynix as AI server demand tightens supply.

The talks cover server DDR and LPDDR, a low-power type of memory. Some customers want agreements extending through 2035, potentially for as long as 10 years. That would exceed the usual three-to-five-year supply terms. The discussions do not identify which customers are seeking the longest deals.

Cloud providers are seeking to reserve memory capacity in advance and are willing to pay more to secure supply for AI expansion. Large U.S. technology companies have also used long-term agreements to secure memory.

The same Chinese cloud companies have pursued computing hardware through large NVIDIA graphics-card orders. The memory discussions extend AI infrastructure competition further into the server supply chain.