OVH CEO predicts some cloud prices to rise 5-10 percent by mid-2026
(2025/11/24)
- Reference: 1763959211
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/24/ovh_cloud_price_rise_prediction/
- Source link:
The price of some cloud services will have to rise by five to ten percent by mid-2026, maybe sooner, according to Octave Klaba, CEO of French cloud OVH.
In a weekend [1]post to his X account, Klaba opened with the observation that the price of RAM and NVMe drives will increase significantly in around six months.
The CEO attributed that increase to demand for AI hardware, which he said has seen memory-makers shift production to the HBM memory used in GPUs. That move means fewer fabs are churning out other forms of memory.
[2]
“This in turn increases price pressure on all types of RAM and NVMe drive components, not just those for AI,” he wrote, according to machine translation of his post.
[3]
[4]
Klaba’s predictions are not an outlier: Memory-centric analyst firm TrendForce last week [5]noted the spot price for 1Gx8 DDR4 memory has risen 158 percent since September 2025, while DDR5 2Gx8 is up 307 percent. Another analyst firm, Counterpoint Research, last week [6]predicted prices will double. Samsung has [7]apparently already lifted prices 60 percent.
The OVH CEO has some good news, in the form of his belief that hardware-makers stocked up on components before prices jumped and can therefore keep the cost of their products steady until June 2026. However, that sort of supply chain move also exerts upward pressure on prices.
[8]
Klaba therefore predicts the cost of servers his cloud buys will rise 15 to 25 percent between December 2025 and 2026, and that increased prices for some cloud services will follow – meaning five to ten percent increases between April and September 2026.
“These are estimates based on the information we have as of November 2025,” he wrote. “This could accelerate.”
Whether cloud prices accelerate to the point at which buyers look for on-prem alternatives is an open question. The Register has covered high-profile cloud repatriation projects at Asian rideshare giant [9]Grab and SaaS outfit [10]37 Signals . Both companies saw swift return on investment when they acquired their own hardware and ran it in colo datacenters. Analysts, however, tell The Register they don’t see rush to repatriate workloads from the cloud. Broadcom’s VMware business unit has made repatriations to private clouds a big part of its strategy, but also hedged by signing major hyperscalers as a partner to run its Cloud Foundation suite.
[11]
The repatriations we’ve seen didn’t involve AI servers, an item many in-house IT departments have not yet learned to rack, stack, run, and cool. Hyperscale clouds also often get their hands on GPUs before smaller buyers, making them an attractive destination for AI workloads. So perhaps higher prices for cloud services won’t deter buyers of AI workloads. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://x.com/olesovhcom/status/1992263316870246627
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/11/19/insights-memory-spot-price-update-ddr5-prices-up-307-since-september-as-module-costs-poised-to-surge/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/19/commodity_memory_price_rise/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/samsung_price_jump/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/grab_macos_cloud_repatriation_savings/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/37signals_cloud_repatriation_storage_savings/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
In a weekend [1]post to his X account, Klaba opened with the observation that the price of RAM and NVMe drives will increase significantly in around six months.
The CEO attributed that increase to demand for AI hardware, which he said has seen memory-makers shift production to the HBM memory used in GPUs. That move means fewer fabs are churning out other forms of memory.
[2]
“This in turn increases price pressure on all types of RAM and NVMe drive components, not just those for AI,” he wrote, according to machine translation of his post.
[3]
[4]
Klaba’s predictions are not an outlier: Memory-centric analyst firm TrendForce last week [5]noted the spot price for 1Gx8 DDR4 memory has risen 158 percent since September 2025, while DDR5 2Gx8 is up 307 percent. Another analyst firm, Counterpoint Research, last week [6]predicted prices will double. Samsung has [7]apparently already lifted prices 60 percent.
The OVH CEO has some good news, in the form of his belief that hardware-makers stocked up on components before prices jumped and can therefore keep the cost of their products steady until June 2026. However, that sort of supply chain move also exerts upward pressure on prices.
[8]
Klaba therefore predicts the cost of servers his cloud buys will rise 15 to 25 percent between December 2025 and 2026, and that increased prices for some cloud services will follow – meaning five to ten percent increases between April and September 2026.
“These are estimates based on the information we have as of November 2025,” he wrote. “This could accelerate.”
Whether cloud prices accelerate to the point at which buyers look for on-prem alternatives is an open question. The Register has covered high-profile cloud repatriation projects at Asian rideshare giant [9]Grab and SaaS outfit [10]37 Signals . Both companies saw swift return on investment when they acquired their own hardware and ran it in colo datacenters. Analysts, however, tell The Register they don’t see rush to repatriate workloads from the cloud. Broadcom’s VMware business unit has made repatriations to private clouds a big part of its strategy, but also hedged by signing major hyperscalers as a partner to run its Cloud Foundation suite.
[11]
The repatriations we’ve seen didn’t involve AI servers, an item many in-house IT departments have not yet learned to rack, stack, run, and cool. Hyperscale clouds also often get their hands on GPUs before smaller buyers, making them an attractive destination for AI workloads. So perhaps higher prices for cloud services won’t deter buyers of AI workloads. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://x.com/olesovhcom/status/1992263316870246627
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/11/19/insights-memory-spot-price-update-ddr5-prices-up-307-since-september-as-module-costs-poised-to-surge/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/19/commodity_memory_price_rise/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/samsung_price_jump/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/grab_macos_cloud_repatriation_savings/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/37signals_cloud_repatriation_storage_savings/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aSPmZ-R6HEa2fS2Yd-cKcAAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/