Micron reaches $700b as AI memory demand surges

Micron, a US memory chipmaker, rose 11% on May 5, taking its market value above US$700 billion for the first time as AI demand kept pressure on memory supply.

The stock has climbed 124% this year and nearly 700% over the past 12 months, while Sandisk, a maker of solid-state drives using NAND memory, jumped 12% and is up about sixfold this year.

Micron recently began shipping what it described as its largest commercially available solid-state drive, as companies including Nvidia and AMD require more memory for AI processors.

After Micron’s fiscal second-quarter results in March, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC that key customers were getting only 50% to two-thirds of the memory they wanted.

🔗 Source: CNBC

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The AI memory boom reaches beyond the data center

Micron’s fiscal Q2 2026 revenue was US$23.68 billion, up 194% from a year earlier 1.
Growth also came from devices outside cloud systems. Micron’s Mobile and Client Business Unit, which sells memory for smartphones and PCs, brought in US$7.7 billion, equal to the Cloud Memory Business Unit that serves data-center customers 2.
Micron tied that demand to a fast hardware shift. The share of flagship smartphones with 12GB or more of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), a common type of working memory, rose from under 20% to nearly 80% year over year in calendar Q4 1.
Micron also said PCs with on-device agentic AI need at least 32GB of memory in recommended specs, about twice the average PC 1.

Long-term contracts are changing the volatile memory chip market

The memory industry has long moved through boom-bust cycles. After peaks, memory-chip stocks historically fell about 50% to 60% as supply flooded the market 3.
To lock in supply during shortages, customers are signing multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements (SCAs), long-term supply contracts. Micron said it signed its first five-year SCA 1.
Micron said all of its 2026 high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a premium type of memory used in AI chips, is already committed under long-term contracts 4.
These deals can give suppliers steadier revenue than spot pricing 3. Some analysts said a wider focus on profitability over market share could ease swings, though the sector remains cyclical 3.