Sony suspends memory card sales indefinitely as AI data centers drain global chip supply

First Western Digital, now Sony: The tech giant suspends SD card sales

The global memory shortage due to rapid AI data center expansion is hitting everyone, even the biggest tech companies in the world. Case in point: Sony is suspending orders for almost all SD card sales from both vendors and consumers, per PetaPixel. The announcement was made on Sony's Japanese website, and explicitly blamed the lack of available memory as a reason why it can't fulfill SD card orders for the time being. Sony's full statement is as follows: Thank you for your continued patronage of Sony products. Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is anticipated that supply will not be able to meet demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future. Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized dealers and from customers at the Sony Store from March 27, 2026 onwards. Regarding the resumption of order acceptance, we will consider it while monitoring the supply situation and will announce it separately on the product information page. CFExpress Type A and Type B cards, as well as regular SD cards, are all affected by this move. Some low-end cards appear to still be in production, per PetaPixel, but as it stands, just assume that any card you see on a store shelf is the last one you'll see there for a while from Sony. The company's statement even straight up said that it doesn't know when it will be able to get the manufacturing up and running again. Sony follows Western Digital as a fellow big tech memory manufacturer that is feeling the squeeze from the needs of data centers. Western Digital announced in February that it had sold out of all hard drives for the year, with 10 whole months to go. This wasn't a great week for Sony in general, as the company also announced massive price hikes on its current-gen PlayStation video game consoles, most likely for the same reasons that it had to stop making SD cards.

Sony is halting sales of memory cards and you have AI to blame for it

Global memory shortages driven by AI demand are now hitting cameras and storage cards. Sony has hit pause on a major part of its storage business, and not-so-surprisingly, AI is one of the reasons behind it. The company has officially announced that it is temporarily suspending orders for most of its CFexpress and SD memory cards, citing a global shortage of semiconductor memory. The suspension applies to both retailers and direct customers, and there's currently no clear timeline for when sales will resume. This isn't just a minor supply hiccup. Instead, it's a sign of a much bigger problem brewing across the tech industry. So what's actually going on? At the core of this is a global memory shortage, and AI is a big part of the story. Demand for memory chips has exploded thanks to AI data centers and high-performance computing, which are consuming massive amounts of DRAM and NAND storage. That's pushing manufacturers to prioritize high-margin enterprise products like SSDs over consumer products like memory cards. In simple terms: the same chips that power your camera's SD card are now being redirected to fuel AI infrastructure. As a result, Sony has halted orders for most of its CFexpress Type A, Type B, and SD card lineup, including high-end "TOUGH" cards and standard consumer models. However, not everything is gone. As suggested by PetaPixel, some lower-end SD cards and select CFexpress Type B models are still available, at least until existing inventory runs out. So while the business isn't completely dead, it's very much on life support for now. So... is this a pause or a goodbye? While this looks like a major shutdown, it's not necessarily the end. Sony's notice makes it clear that the company intends to bring these products back at some point, but there's no timeline on when production or sales might resume. For now, it's more of a "we'll be back... eventually" situation. Just don't expect your next memory card upgrade anytime soon.

Sony Is Putting Its SD and CFExpress Memory Card Production On Hold Thanks To AI - IGN

Sony has temporarily suspended orders for many of its memory cards because of the ongoing global storage shortage that's affecting the pricing and availability of things like RAM, GPUs, and game consoles, current and future. The company did not say when it will resume selling the products; just that it will continue "monitoring te supply situation," according to a Peta Pixel translation of the Japanese language announcement. The suspension, which started Friday, March 27, affects six models of CFexpress Type A and B, which are high-performance memory cards meant for things like professional digital cameras, along with nine models of its SD cards. Here's the full list, from a machine-translation of the article: For each of those, the number represents the storage level of the card - CEA-G1920T is a 1,920GB card, for example. That list means tiers will remain, like the 320GB and 640GB Type A cards or the 960GB and 1,920GB Type B ones. At the moment, even some of the temporarily discontinued cards are still available on Sony's website and elsewhere, but don't expect that to last as remaining supply dwindles. The list doesn't include any Sony microSD cards, and thankfully, you can still find and buy many IGN's favorites for the Switch 2, handheld gaming PCs, and the Steam Deck. The RAM and memory crisis, brought on by massive demand from AI companies, continues to have widespread effects across all of the technology industry, effects that will make for a very expensive and weird gaming generation. We've already seen signs of that, in Steam Deck supply issues and Valve's inability to put a price or release date on the Steam Machine. (The company is still targeting 2026.) The beginning of the year saw manufacturing disruptions for the RTX 5070 Ti, too, and shortages could mean we'll be waiting a while for the Sony PlayStation 6. It's expected - though not guaranteed - that Nintendo will hike prices on the Switch 2, soon.