Framework recently published a pricing update regarding some of its Laptop 13 Pro SKUs, confirming that it has been subject to an unexpected 100%+ price increase for LPCAMM2 modules, which has meant that Laptop 13 Pro prices have had to increase in order to cover increased costs. Framework says that the price increase "goes far beyond anything we had predicted and anything we're able to absorb without placing our ability to operate at real financial risk."

One issue that has repeatedly come up in the Framework community on Reddit, for instance, is that the company has effectively gone back on a promise it made when it announced the Laptop 13 Pro. At launch, Nirav Patel, Framework's CEO, stated that "we are going to honor any existing pricing for any pre-order that gets placed on our website...that's not to say that we're not going to end up changing prices in the future for new orders, but we're not going to go back and change prices for orders that anyone's ever actually placed already."Despite this promise, there have been a number of early Laptop 13 Pro pre-order buyers who have posted screenshots of emails from Framework stating that the configuration that they had pre-ordered would not be available due to the RAM price increase. A number of reports in the subreddit noted that their pre-order configurations were changed, with reports confirming that prices have been lowered due to reduced memory capacity in their new configurations.

In Framework's memory pricing update, the company says that "We have enough LPCAMM2 memory modules on hand to cover all existing pre-orders, but unfortunately not in the mix of 64 GB, 32 GB, and 16 GB that matches those pre-orders." The statement also explains that, although prices for later batches of pre-orders (batch 4 of laptops and batch 7 of mainboards) are being adjusted, in most cases with 64 GB orders being stepped down to 32 GB of RAM or 32 GB configurations being reduced to 16 GB, buyers will still pay the original pre-order price for their respective new configuration—configurations adjusted to 32 GB will pay the original 32 GB prices, and those who still have 64 GB configurations will still pay the same price.

Framework's full memory pricing update reads:

Framework Laptop 13 Pro updates

We've consistently held and communicated a philosophy of absorbing price increases wherever we can, making pricing predictable and ensuring that when you place a pre-order, you'll be able to get the product you ordered at the price you ordered it at. We've been able to do that to date with Framework Laptop 13 Pro, and have absorbed increases in a number of areas. However, we recently received a cost update from our LPCAMM2 supplier that goes far beyond anything we had predicted and anything we're able to absorb without placing our ability to operate at real financial risk. Rather than the low-to-mid double-digit percentage increase we had forecast from Q2 to Q3 on LPCAMM2 costs, we received prices that are more than double that of the prior inventory we had brought in. We have enough LPCAMM2 memory modules on hand to cover all existing pre-orders, but unfortunately not in the mix of 64 GB, 32 GB, and 16 GB that matches those pre-orders.

After evaluating a number of possible paths forward, we're proceeding on the one that we believe minimizes the impact of this challenge. We have enough 64 GB modules in inventory to cover pre-order batches through Batch 4 of laptops and Batch 7 of Mainboards. For orders beyond that configured with 64 GB, we've updated the order configuration to use a 32 GB module at the original 32 GB module price. After that, we allocated the remaining 32 GB modules to DIY Edition and Mainboard pre-orders configured with 32 GB through Batch 4 of laptops and Batch 7 of Mainboards. For DIY Edition and Mainboard orders beyond that configured with 32 GB, we've updated the order configuration to use a 16 GB module at the original 16 GB price. Note that because we don't currently have a Core X7 Ultra pre-built configuration with 16 GB of memory, we have not adjusted pre-built orders that originally contained 32 GB. That is a configuration we plan to introduce later.

Alongside these changes to existing pre-order configurations, we've updated the pricing on our website for newly placed pre-orders. Our new LPCAMM2 pricing is below the substantially higher cost we're now sourcing it at to try to mitigate some of the impact to new customers. While we have kept our original 16 GB LPCAMM2 pricing for now, we anticipate we will consume the remaining inventory of modules we brought in at lower cost soon, and will then need to increase pricing for new orders. The system and Mainboard pricing for new orders also reflects an upcoming increase in Core Ultra Series 3 processor pricing that impacts X7 and X9 configurations, an increase in Windows license costs, and increases in memory, storage, and other silicon costs for some of our Ryzen AI 300 Series configurations.