Global Chip Crisis Hits, Google Reveals Its Impact

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Since late last year, memory chips have experienced a supply shortage due to the increasingly rapid development of AI. This phenomenon has also caused chip prices to increase.

Regarding this, Google Cloud Indonesia Country Director Karim Siregar said the trend of scarcity will indeed have an impact on prices. Overall, the impact will be felt by all hyperscale data centres.

"Among ourselves, we will try our best to ensure prices remain at the right level. But if there is a very, very high price surge, we will indeed need to make adjustments," Karim explained during a Google Cloud Media Briefing in Jakarta on Wednesday (15/7/2026).

Karim also added that chip orders have already been secured for the next one to two years, which helps stabilise prices for the time being.

In the same event, Google explained that the company already has its own Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) for AI development. VP Customer Engineering Google Cloud Asia Pacific, Moe Abdula, explained that the TPU was built because the company realised AI needed something different.

"So we conducted an analysis, for example, what if searches were done using voice? And that requires a lot of technology chains. That is where the TPU emerged. And we have been using it for quite a long time to enable parallel processing," he explained.

Nevertheless, GPUs are still used simultaneously. Google Cloud also continues to offer both GPUs and TPUs to its clients.

"Because we have a fairly good network of suppliers, we are able to continue providing both TPU and GPU solutions to all Google Cloud users. For example, we partner with and also support NVIDIA. And we do not have issues with TPU or GPU limitations as questioned earlier," Moe clarified.