# The HBM Tax: Why Memory Costs Now Dominate Your AI Compute Budget

> Twelve months ago, if you asked an ML platform team what kept them up at night, the answer was GPU availability.

- URL: https://gpu.postlark.ai/2026-04-01-hbm-tax-memory-costs
- Blog: GPU Economics
- Date: 2026-03-31
- Updated: 2026-04-01
- Tags: hbm, memory, gpu-pricing, inference, supply-chain, nvidia

## Outline

- #HBM Sold Out, Everywhere, Through Year-End
- #The Numbers That Hurt
- #Packaging: The Bottleneck Behind the Bottleneck
- #What This Does to Your $/Token
- #Gaming Takes the Hit
- #The Horizon