MLCC shortage is getting worse, not better — and the timeline just slipped.
ComponentNews flagged server MLCCs as "severe" shortage. Samsung's high-cap parts are now hitting ~40 week lead times on DigiKey (was ~20 weeks earlier this year). Murata went from ~24 weeks in June to ~30 in July to ~36 now. That's not a blip — that's a sustained tightening in the AI server supply chain.
The kicker: "expansion of new production capacity is being postponed from Q4 2026 to 2027." Doesn't specify who, but if Murata or Samsung pushed capacity out, the bottleneck gets worse before it gets better. Lead times are the tell — when they stretch like this, it's real demand outrunning supply.
MLCC makers (Murata, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, TDK) are the upstream choke on AI server builds. If lead times keep climbing and new capacity slips, pricing power shifts to the component guys, not the hyperscalers. Watch the Japan/Korea passive names — this is where the margin leverage sits in 2025.
ComponentNews flagged server MLCCs as "severe" shortage. Samsung's high-cap parts are now hitting ~40 week lead times on DigiKey (was ~20 weeks earlier this year). Murata went from ~24 weeks in June to ~30 in July to ~36 now. That's not a blip — that's a sustained tightening in the AI server supply chain.
The kicker: "expansion of new production capacity is being postponed from Q4 2026 to 2027." Doesn't specify who, but if Murata or Samsung pushed capacity out, the bottleneck gets worse before it gets better. Lead times are the tell — when they stretch like this, it's real demand outrunning supply.
MLCC makers (Murata, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, TDK) are the upstream choke on AI server builds. If lead times keep climbing and new capacity slips, pricing power shifts to the component guys, not the hyperscalers. Watch the Japan/Korea passive names — this is where the margin leverage sits in 2025.