The Bank of England warned that expanding AI compute demand is increasing memory-chip costs for phones, laptops, and game consoles.

The Bank of England warned that rapid growth in artificial-intelligence computing capacity was raising the cost of memory chips used in mobile phones, laptops, and game consoles. The report presented AI-related memory demand as an additional source of price pressure alongside higher energy costs.

July data from the British Retail Consortium indicated that higher chip costs were already passing through to electronics prices. The source did not identify specific memory technologies, manufacturers, chip contract prices, or the size of the resulting retail-price increases.

The warning appeared in the context of upcoming U.K. inflation data, for which surveyed economists’ median forecast was a 2.9% inflation rate in July. That figure was a forecast reported by the source, not a released inflation result.