Why Premium SSDs Cost More Than Gold: Storage Price Crisis [2025]

The Shocking Truth About SSD Pricing in 2025

You're looking at your storage upgrade options, and something feels off. That 4TB high-end NVMe drive you were eyeing three years ago? It's basically a luxury item now. Not because the technology improved dramatically, but because the economics of storage have fundamentally shifted.

Here's what's happening: premium solid-state drives have become so expensive that they're genuinely worth more per gram than gold. Let that sink in for a moment. The physical material sitting in your data center costs more than precious metal by weight. It's not a typo. It's not clickbait. It's the new reality of enterprise-grade storage, as detailed in Tom's Hardware.

This isn't just a minor price creep either. We're talking about storage costs that have climbed 30-45% in some categories over the past 18 months, with no clear end in sight. Enterprise SSD prices have become a genuine budget concern for companies that need reliable, fast storage. Small businesses are rethinking their infrastructure plans. Data centers are sweating their quarterly expenses.

The question everyone's asking: how did we get here, and more importantly, when does it end? The answer involves supply chain chaos, manufacturing constraints, shifting demand patterns, and some frankly cynical corporate strategy. Let's dig into the actual mechanics of what's driving these prices skyward.

TL; DR

• Premium NVMe SSDs now cost more per gram than gold, with top-tier enterprise drives hitting absurd price-per-TB ratios, as noted by Tom's Hardware.
• Prices have surged 30-45% in 18 months due to supply constraints, flash memory shortages, and reduced manufacturing capacity, according to IDC.
• PCIe 5.0 and cutting-edge controllers justify some premium, but manufacturers are also capitalizing on limited competition.
• Enterprise storage remains expensive because reliability and warranty support carry real costs.
• Relief is coming eventually, but don't expect dramatic price drops before 2026 at the earliest, as suggested by Fortune.

Understanding the Storage Cost Explosion

The price per terabyte for premium SSDs tells a remarkable story. Back in 2022, you could grab a solid 2TB NVMe drive for under

When you do the math on a 4TB enterprise-grade drive at

The data becomes even more striking when you look at specific product lines. Enterprise NVMe drives from Samsung, Intel, and Kioxia have seen wholesale price increases that outpace inflation by a factor of 3-5x. This isn't economy-wide pricing pressure. This is sector-specific.

Why NAND Flash Became So Expensive

You need to understand the NAND flash manufacturing process to grasp why prices have become untethered from historical trends. NAND fabrication is capital-intensive in ways most people don't appreciate. Building a fab costs $15-20 billion. Operating costs run hundreds of millions annually. Yield rates determine profitability, and yield rates are tricky.

When you're manufacturing at sub-5nm nodes with 3D NAND stacking reaching 200+ layers, manufacturing tolerances become absurdly tight. A small increase in defect rates destroys your margins. A supply disruption cascades through global tech. The system is efficient until it's fragile.

That fragility has been severely tested. The past three years brought a perfect storm of supply shocks. TSMC diverted wafer capacity toward AI chips and advanced logic processes. Samsung deliberately reduced NAND output to stabilize prices (and thus protect margins). SK Hynix has been cautious about expansion. Geopolitical tension added uncertainty to investment decisions.

The result: available NAND capacity tightened considerably. Demand remained strong or even increased, especially from data centers training AI models. When supply drops and demand holds steady, prices rise. Basic economics. What's less basic is the magnitude of the increase and how long it's persisting.

Manufacturers have also begun qualifying newer materials and processes. Moving from planar NAND to 3D NAND was a major transition. Each new generation requires new equipment, new validation procedures, new fab configuration. There's lag time. During that lag, you have constrained supply and strong demand.

The Role of Enterprise SSD Premium Pricing

Enterprise SSDs cost a lot more than consumer drives. Same physical form factor, similar capacity, but the price delta is 2-3x. People often assume this is just artificial segmentation, but the reality is more nuanced.

Enterprise drives include several things consumer drives don't: power-loss protection (PLP) circuitry that safeguards in-flight data if the drive loses power mid-write. Enterprise firmware optimized for 24/7 operation under sustained load. Extended warranties covering replacement and support. Better thermal management. Higher endurance ratings (measured in drive writes per day). Quality assurance at a different level.

These aren't minor differences. PLP alone adds cost. The capacitors and custom power management circuitry to keep your cache flushed during an unexpected power event isn't free. Neither is the engineering validation to ensure the drive handles power failures gracefully thousands of times.

Enterprise customers also expect responsiveness from vendors. You call Dell or Net App with a storage emergency at 3 AM on a Saturday, and someone picks up. That support infrastructure has real cost. Spare units in regional warehouses. Replacement logistics. Technical support teams in multiple time zones.

But here's where it gets murky: the markup is definitely higher than just these tangible differences justify. Manufacturers know enterprise buyers have less price sensitivity. A

PCIe 5.0 and Next-Generation Performance Commands Premium Pricing

The newest generation of SSDs supporting PCIe 5.0 have hit the market, and they're expensive. Not because PCIe 5.0 drives are technically revolutionary, but because they represent the cutting edge, and cutting edge has a cost.

PCIe 5.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, allowing sequential read speeds of 12-14 GB/s versus the 4-5 GB/s of PCIe 4.0 drives. For most workloads, this improvement is invisible. Your database doesn't care if it reads data at 4 GB/s or 14 GB/s if the bottleneck is CPU processing or network I/O.

But for specific use cases—video editing with 8K RAW footage, machine learning model loading, large dataset transfers—the speed difference is genuine. And manufacturers are pricing accordingly. A PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive from Corsair or Western Digital runs

What's interesting is that the actual controller and NAND costs don't justify the full premium. A PCIe 5.0 controller is more complex, yes. But not $300-400 more complex. You're paying for early-adoption tax, for performance metrics in spec sheets, and for capacity planning that assumes future workload growth.

Supply Chain Constraints and Fab Utilization

Here's a fact that doesn't get enough attention: major NAND manufacturers haven't been operating at full capacity. This is intentional. Samsung publicly stated it was deliberately reducing output to stabilize pricing. SK Hynix did the same. This is industry coordination that lives in a gray zone legally, but it's transparent about the goal: prevent prices from crashing.

In a healthy market, if demand drops, suppliers increase output to maintain margins. If demand rises, they expand capacity. The NAND market isn't functioning that way currently. Instead, suppliers are restricting output to maintain profitability despite softer demand in some segments.

This creates an unusual dynamic. Consumer SSD prices have been relatively stable or even declining slightly because consumer demand is price-sensitive. If a manufacturer tried to raise consumer SSD prices significantly, buyers would shift to older inventory or competing brands. Enterprise SSDs, however, have less competition and more price inelasticity. So manufacturers have focused restriction on enterprise capacity.

The result: enterprise SSD availability is tight, and pricing reflects that tightness. A server manufacturer needing 10,000 units of a specific drive faces extended lead times and no negotiating power. Smaller quantities might take 6-8 weeks to arrive. Larger orders push into weeks or months.

The Role of AI Chip Demand in Storage Pricing

The AI boom has had unexpected consequences for SSD pricing. The obvious impact: AI training requires enormous compute resources, which requires GPUs, which require data centers, which require storage. Demand for enterprise SSDs went up. Supply couldn't keep pace.

The less obvious impact: the same fabs that make NAND flash also make logic chips. As demand for AI processors (GPUs, TPUs, etc.) skyrocketed, foundries like TSMC had limited capacity. Capital allocation decisions meant investing more in advanced logic nodes and less in NAND. It's more profitable to make a chip that costs 5x as much per die.

This has cascading effects. When logic capacity is tight, NAND capacity becomes lower priority. Fab managers want to maximize revenue per wafer start. A wafer producing cutting-edge 3nm logic processors generates more revenue than a wafer producing NAND flash at the same process node.

Moreover, major NAND manufacturers are themselves competing for advanced packaging and test resources. Samsung is producing AI accelerators alongside SSDs. The same test floors, the same logistics networks, the same supply chains are being stretched.

The knock-on effect: NAND production became constrained not just by fab output, but by packaging, testing, and logistics bottlenecks. When you introduce multiple bottlenecks, they multiply the impact on supply. It's not that fab capacity dropped 10%. It's that fab capacity, plus testing capacity, plus logistics capacity all became tighter, which compounds the shortage.

Manufacturing Yield and Quality Control Costs

As NAND processes have advanced to extreme nodes, manufacturing tolerances have become absurdly tight. A manufacturing defect that would have been invisible at 40nm becomes catastrophic at 5nm. This means greater investment in process control, metrology equipment, and defect prevention.

Yield rates are a huge driver of unit costs. If a fab produces 1000 wafers and 950 are good, yield is 95%. If it drops to 920 because of a process drift, yield is 92%. That 3-point drop might seem small, but it directly impacts cost per good die. You're paying the same fab overhead but getting fewer sellable units.

Manufacturers have responded by tightening process control and investing in better tools. The problem: these tools cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and they take time to implement. During the transition, yields can actually decrease temporarily before recovering at higher levels.

There's also a quality assurance cost that's often underestimated. Enterprise SSDs go through more extensive validation testing than consumer drives. Extended burn-in, temperature cycling, power cycling, data integrity verification. Each of these processes takes time and infrastructure.

Some manufacturers have also had to scrap or rework significant quantities of product. If a batch of NAND doesn't meet endurance specifications, you can't sell it as an enterprise drive. It becomes a consumer product or scrap. Either way, you've paid for fab capacity that didn't produce saleable enterprise products.

Geopolitical Tension and Supply Uncertainty

The semiconductor industry operates on global supply chains that have become fragile. Taiwan produces roughly 92% of the world's advanced semiconductor capacity. When there's geopolitical uncertainty around Taiwan, manufacturers start hedging. They place larger orders. They accumulate inventory. They lock in pricing.

This defensive behavior, multiplied across thousands of companies, tightens supply for everyone. A company that might have ordered 500 units orders 750 "just in case." That incremental demand pushes prices up. Manufacturers see the hoarding and raise prices further, which accelerates hoarding.

We've seen this cycle before. In 2020, pandemic-related supply shocks triggered hoarding that extended shortages by months. In 2024, Taiwan-focused geopolitical concerns have triggered similar behavior, even if actual supply disruptions haven't materialized.

Manufacturers are also diversifying supply away from Taiwan as a strategic move. Building fabs is slow (2-3 years minimum). Until new capacity comes online in South Korea, Japan, and potentially other locations, the supply chain remains concentrated and therefore fragile. Prices will remain elevated until supply diversity is genuinely achieved.

The Economics of SSD Manufacturing vs. Demand Cycles

The SSD market has historically operated on a cycle. Strong demand. Manufacturers expand capacity. Capacity comes online. Prices drop. Demand weakens. Manufacturers cut production. Repeat.

What's different now is the cycle has been disrupted. Even as some demand segments have softened (consumer PC storage, for example), enterprise demand has remained robust or grown. Manufacturers can't simply cut production across the board because enterprise customers would punish them with lost business.

So the industry has adopted a new strategy: maintain production levels, but don't invest heavily in expansion. This allows them to harvest high prices from enterprise while not overcommitting to capacity that might not be needed if demand normalizes.

This strategy works until it doesn't. If a competitor invests heavily and brings new capacity online aggressively, they can undercut pricing and gain share. But that's a risky move in an uncertain environment. Better to play it safe, keep production flat, and accept higher prices and longer lead times as the new normal.

The downside for customers: you get the worst of both worlds. Prices are high (because supply is restricted), but supply is still tight (because growth investments have been conservative). It's a supplier-favorable environment that could persist for 18-24 months before any meaningful relief.

Comparing SSD Costs to Legacy Storage Options

Here's perspective that's often missing from the pricing discussion: even though SSDs are expensive, they've never been cheaper relative to the value they provide. The cost-to-performance ratio is still improving dramatically.

Consider a data center from 2015 running traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). A 2TB enterprise HDD cost roughly $150-200. Performance was measured in IOPS, typically 150-200 random IOPS for a 7200 RPM drive. Total cost of ownership included power consumption (operating an HDD at 8+ watts continuous), cooling infrastructure, physical space, and maintenance.

A modern enterprise SSD, even at "expensive" pricing of $800 for 4TB, provides roughly 100,000 IOPS at 5-6 watts. Performance-per-watt is roughly 16,000x better. Cost-per-IOPS is roughly 300x better. When you factor in the operational savings from reduced power and cooling, plus the performance benefits that enable different architectural choices, the business case for SSDs is stronger than ever.

What's changed is that SSDs have become standard, so the incremental cost improvement is less noticeable. In 2015, replacing an HDD array with SSDs could be justified by performance alone. In 2025, SSDs are the default, and the question is which SSD and how to optimize spend.

The pricing pressure isn't actually about the value proposition. It's about the fact that all SSDs are now expensive, so there's no cheaper alternative. In 2015, you could make a NAND-based trade-off decision. In 2025, NAND is the only decision. Therefore, prices can float higher without demand destruction.

Storage Segmentation: Where Prices Are Most Extreme

Not all SSDs are priced equally. Segmentation is real, and the premium tiers are where the most outrageous pricing lives.

Consumer NVMe SSDs (gaming, productivity laptops) have seen modest price increases—maybe 15-20% over two years. There's price competition among Corsair, Western Digital, Samsung, and others. Prices stabilize around transparent cost-of-living adjustments.

Mid-market data center drives for small-to-medium businesses have seen moderate increases—25-35%. These drives need reliability but don't require the full enterprise warranty suite. Price-sensitive businesses in this segment shop carefully and often delay upgrades.

Enterprise-grade SSDs for major data centers and cloud providers have seen the most dramatic increases—40-60% or more. This is where manufacturers have the least competition and customers have the least flexibility. A Facebook or Google will pay premium pricing for a specific drive configuration if it solves a particular problem. A startup might not.

Specialized SSDs for specific use cases (high-endurance, extreme temperature, military-grade) occupy a category of their own with pricing that's almost disconnected from commodity NAND costs. These drives are low-volume, high-engineered products. Pricing reflects that reality.

When Will SSD Prices Return to Normal?

The timeline for price relief is uncertain, but some trends suggest gradual improvement starting mid-2025 or late 2025, with more substantial relief by 2026.

New fab capacity is coming online. Samsung is expanding its NAND capacity in South Korea. SK Hynix is investing in new facilities. Kioxia and Western Digital are ramping production. These investments don't happen overnight—it takes 2-3 years for a fab to reach full production. But the trajectory suggests that by 2026 or 2027, there will be measurably more NAND capacity in the market.

Demand dynamics are also shifting. The initial AI boom drove extreme demand for high-capacity storage. But most of the major training infrastructure is now in place. Future demand growth will be more gradual. Slower demand growth, combined with increasing supply, creates the conditions for price stabilization or decline.

However, manufacturers have learned that they can maintain margins at higher price points. They're unlikely to voluntarily discount aggressively. Instead, you'll probably see prices stabilize at levels that are 10-20% higher than 2022 levels but 10-20% lower than current 2025 levels. The new equilibrium will be higher than the old equilibrium, but lower than the current peak.

There's also a wildcard: if AI demand accelerates faster than current projections, or if geopolitical tensions intensify, supply could remain tight and prices could stay elevated. Conversely, if macro conditions deteriorate and demand destroys, we might see faster price declines. Most likely: gradual improvement through 2026, with broader relief coming 2027-2028.

Strategies for Managing High SSD Costs

While you're waiting for prices to normalize, there are practical approaches to optimize storage spending without crippling performance.

Tiered storage architectures use fast NVMe for hot data and slower (cheaper) SSDs or HDDs for warm and cold data. This approach has become standard in enterprise deployments, but it requires thoughtful implementation. The overhead of moving data between tiers needs to be optimized. Tools that automatically promote/demote data based on access patterns are essential.

Capacity planning with higher rigor is justified when prices are high. Rather than provisioning storage with comfortable headroom, you want to be more aggressive about forecasting actual demand. This is easier for some workloads (databases with predictable growth) than others (development environments where consumption is variable). But the cost incentive to be precise is stronger.

Vendor diversification helps manage risk and sometimes negotiates better terms. Rather than standardizing on a single vendor, organizations can use strategic purchases from multiple suppliers. This creates competition, which encourages better pricing. It also hedges against specific vendor supply disruptions.

Lease vs. buy trade-offs deserve fresh evaluation. In a high-price environment, leasing SSDs with included maintenance and replacement programs becomes more attractive. The upfront lease cost is higher, but it locks in predictability and transfers some risk to vendors. For fast-growing startups with uncertain capacity needs, leasing can actually be cheaper.

Right-sizing for actual requirements rather than theoretical capacity also reduces costs. Many organizations provision storage for peak load scenarios that never materialize. When prices are high, the incentive to provision only for actual demand is stronger. This requires more sophisticated monitoring, but the cost savings justify the investment.

For consumer users, the options are more limited but no less important. Buying an older-generation drive that's proven stable can save 15-25% versus the latest model. Consumer models have stabilized in price, so shopping around across brands (checking Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy) often reveals better deals than flagship retailers.

The Broader Implications for Technology Infrastructure

High SSD prices have subtle but important implications for how organizations build infrastructure. When storage is cheap, you can afford to be loose about data redundancy, backup strategies, and retention. Multiple copies are redundant but also provide security.

When storage costs climb, these strategies need reconsideration. An organization might shift from 3-copy replication to 2-copy with erasure coding (which provides similar resilience with 30-40% less capacity). Or they might implement aggressive data lifecycle policies that move old data to cheaper archive storage faster.

These architectural changes aren't free. They require engineering effort, testing, and operational complexity. But when storage costs are high enough, the engineering investment pays back within 18-36 months.

There are also long-term market shifts happening. Cloud providers are investing heavily in in-memory databases and caching layers that reduce reliance on SSD storage. This is partly driven by SSD cost. Workloads that would have used SSD directly are instead using memory with tiering. The economics have shifted the preferred approach.

Similarly, organizations are investing more in data compression and deduplication technologies. These technologies reduce the physical storage capacity needed by 20-50% depending on the workload. When storage is expensive, these investments become more financially justified.

Predictions for Enterprise SSD Market Evolution

Looking forward to 2026-2027, several trends seem likely:

Consolidation in the vendor space could accelerate. Marginal players like smaller controller makers might struggle to compete when margins tighten. The market will likely stabilize around 4-5 dominant suppliers rather than the current 8-10. Consolidation would eventually help prices as manufacturing efficiency improves.

Standardization around PCIe 5.0 will accelerate adoption despite current high pricing. By 2026, PCIe 5.0 drives will be mainstream enough that pricing tightens. The premium over PCIe 4.0 will compress from

Software-defined storage will become increasingly important as organizations optimize around expensive hardware. Better tools for managing data tiering, compression, and deduplication will be table stakes. Organizations will expect software to abstract SSD management complexity.

Environmental factors will start influencing purchase decisions more directly. High-capacity SSDs that reduce power consumption will command modest premiums. The total cost of ownership calculation will increasingly include power and cooling.

Supply chain diversification will continue as a strategic priority. Companies will actively work to reduce concentration in Taiwan. This won't happen quickly, but it's a multi-year initiative across the industry. Until diversification is real, supply chain risk will keep pricing elevated.

Actionable Recommendations for Different Audiences

For individuals building personal systems: Consumer SSD prices have stabilized. There's no financial case to delay purchases. Budget

For small businesses with modest storage needs: Evaluate tiered storage. Use an NVMe drive for your most active data (3-6 months worth), and move older data to cheaper cloud storage or a second large SATA SSD. This strategy reduces total cost while maintaining good performance on working data.

For mid-market organizations: Invest in storage efficiency tools if you haven't already. Data compression and deduplication are table stakes. Implement automated data tiering. Use these tools to reduce physical capacity requirements, which directly reduces cost. The tools pay for themselves within 18 months.

For large enterprises: Lock in multi-year agreements with suppliers to fix pricing. Accept slightly lower performance specs (like longer lead times) in exchange for volume discounts. Invest in software-defined storage platforms that reduce vendor lock-in. Diversify suppliers across geographies to hedge supply risk.

FAQ

What does it mean that SSDs are worth more than gold by weight?

Premium enterprise SSDs have reached price points where the per-gram cost of the drive exceeds the per-gram cost of gold metal. For example, a 4TB enterprise SSD at

Why have SSD prices increased so much in recent years?

Multiple factors have combined to drive prices up: NAND flash manufacturing became more complex as process nodes advanced to 3D structures with 200+ layers, reducing yields and increasing costs. Manufacturers intentionally restricted production capacity to stabilize pricing and protect margins. Geopolitical uncertainty around Taiwan, which produces 92% of advanced semiconductors, triggered hoarding behavior. Demand from AI data centers surged, consuming available supply. And reduced fab capacity investments slowed new production coming online. All these factors combined have created sustained pricing pressure that's likely to persist through 2025.

Are high SSD prices permanent or will they come down?

Prices will likely come down gradually but won't return to 2021-2022 levels. New fab capacity coming online in 2025-2026 will increase supply and create downward pressure. However, manufacturers have learned that they can maintain margins at higher prices, so the new equilibrium will probably be 10-20% higher than pre-shortage prices. Meaningful relief (15-25% price drops) is likely by late 2026 or 2027. In the shorter term, prices will likely stabilize rather than decline further.

Should I buy an SSD now or wait for prices to drop?

The decision depends on your timeline and needs. If you need storage immediately, current prices, while high, still represent excellent performance-per-dollar compared to alternatives like hard drives. If you can defer purchases 6-12 months, waiting for price stabilization might save 10-15%. For enterprise purchases with long lead times, starting procurement conversations now makes sense because availability is tight even at current prices. Consumer users have more flexibility to wait without major consequences.

What's the difference between consumer and enterprise SSD pricing?

Enterprise SSDs cost 2-3x more than consumer drives for similar capacity. The premium reflects real differences: enterprise drives include power-loss protection circuitry, extended warranties (3-5 years vs. 1-3 years), higher endurance ratings, 24/7 operation optimization, and vendor support. However, not all of the premium reflects these tangible costs; some reflects the fact that enterprise customers are less price-sensitive and willing to pay for proven reliability and support. Mid-market solutions often provide good value by offering enterprise features at consumer-plus pricing.

How can I reduce SSD storage costs in my organization?

Implement tiered storage using fast NVMe for active data and slower/cheaper drives for archive. Invest in data compression and deduplication tools that can reduce capacity requirements by 20-50%. Use software-defined storage platforms that provide abstraction and flexibility. Lock in multi-year agreements with suppliers for volume discounts. Evaluate leasing vs. purchasing for different use cases. Implement aggressive data lifecycle policies that move old data to cheaper storage quickly. For every gigabyte of unnecessary data you eliminate, you reduce storage costs proportionally.

What's the timeline for SSD price normalization?

Gradual improvement is likely starting in mid-2025 as early fab capacity comes online. More substantial relief (10-15% price decreases) is probable by late 2025 or early 2026. Significant price drops (20%+) are unlikely before 2027. Geopolitical factors, AI demand trajectory, and macro economic conditions will influence the actual timeline. The most likely scenario: prices stabilize at elevated levels by mid-2026, then gradually decline through 2027-2028 to levels that are 10-15% higher than 2022 baselines.

Are there alternatives to expensive SSDs I should consider?

For some workloads, yes. In-memory databases and caching layers reduce reliance on SSD storage for performance-critical data. Hybrid approaches using cheaper cloud object storage for less-frequently accessed data work well for many organizations. Tape storage remains excellent for long-term archive workloads where access frequency is very low. However, for most modern applications, SSDs are the standard for good reasons. The performance benefits justify the cost even at elevated pricing levels. Alternatives are worth considering for specific workloads, not as blanket replacements.

Conclusion: Navigating the High-Price SSD Market

The reality that premium SSDs now cost more per gram than gold isn't actually about precious metals or literal ounces. It's a symptom of how complex and capacity-constrained NAND flash manufacturing has become. When you're stacking 200+ layers of transistors with nanometer-scale tolerances, yields are sensitive, supply is constrained, and prices float higher than historical baselines.

Understanding the mechanics of this price escalation helps clarify that it's not permanent, but it's also not going away anytime soon. We're in a transition period where new capacity is coming online slowly, demand remains robust despite economic uncertainty, and manufacturers are rationing supply to protect margins.

For individuals and businesses, the practical implications are clear: if you need storage, buy now rather than hoping for dramatic price drops. If you can optimize usage through better architecture and tools, do it. The ROI on data compression, tiering, and efficiency improvements is strong in a high-price environment. And start planning for late 2025 or 2026 as the timeline when prices stabilize and gradual declines begin.

The SSD market will eventually normalize. Manufacturing capacity will catch up to demand. Supply chain concentration in Taiwan will decrease through geographic diversification. Competition will intensify as new players enter the market. But that normalization is still 18-36 months away. Until then, expect storage prices to remain elevated, lead times to remain stretched, and the careful planning of infrastructure to matter more than ever. The premium metals comparison is ultimately just a metric highlighting how much manufacturing complexity and supply constraints have reshaped the economics of modern storage.