Micron, a Boise, Idaho-based memory chip maker, has captured the hearts of Wall Street. Whether this love will last will largely depend on how long the AI-induced memory chip supply crunch lasts.
Micron promised that it would position itself for the long term to withstand a sharp decline in demand or oversupply. And Wall Street helped Micron briefly surpass the market value of Meta and Tesla for the first time on Thursday, but fell back to nearly match it on Friday.
In particular, Micron closed trading on Friday with a market capitalization close to $1.27 trillion, Meta’s reached $1.39 trillion, and Tesla’s reached $1.42 trillion. Micron’s stock price soared more than 236% in the past month alone, closing Friday at $1,132 per share. By comparison, it spent several years below $100 per share before mid-2025.
It’s a dizzying rise for a company associated with the tiny memory cards that most consumers typically needed to boost their PC, smartphone or other device storage at the time.
Wall Street doesn’t sweat that product line. Micron is benefiting from a boom in AI data center construction that has led to a shortage of system memory chips, especially high-bandwidth memory (HBM), both the DRAM and NAND that Micron makes. A single AI server requires significantly more memory than a laptop.
AI system manufacturers like Nvidia, as well as hyperscalers building their own systems, are purchasing large quantities of memory, including Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google, Meta, and Oracle. This forces every other company that needs memory to stock up too, from PC makers like Dell and HP to manufacturers of other kinds of devices.
This supply shortage, called RAMageddon, is expected to last until 2027. And that’s already driving up the prices of consumer electronics like Apple products and Xbox consoles.
With the entire technology industry clamoring for more memory, Micron delivered blockbuster third-quarter results last week. During the same period, sales reached $41.45 billion, four times higher than the previous year, and profits soared from $1.88 billion to $28.2 billion. Micron also gave a positive outlook, predicting fourth quarter sales of $49 billion to $51 billion.
And Wall Street, eager to find more AI-related public companies that could do as well as Nvidia, was even more fascinated.
The historical problem for memory chip makers like Micron and Samsung is that building out manufacturing facilities to increase capacity is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. And just as companies are able to increase production capacity, demand often decreases, causing prices to fall due to overproduction.
Micron got ahead of all the AI bankruptcy talk by highlighting a series of long-term supply contracts that could probably protect AI, including with Nvidia and AI lab Anthropic. The company said in its earnings presentation that it has signed 16 strategic customer agreements across data center, consumer and automotive market segments, which it expects will fundamentally transform its business model.
This seemed to convince many analysts that the company could be another long-term, profitable investment. In a research note, Sebastien Naji, technology analyst at William Blair, noted that demand growth continues to outpace the rate at which new cleanroom space can come online.
“Given the high likelihood of continued ASP growth in the coming quarters and improved revenue visibility as long-term agreements (SCAs) with key customers expand rapidly, we see the potential for more sustained revenue growth and maintain our Outperform rating,” Naji wrote.
It remains to be seen whether Micron can actually sustain itself over the long term without a recession cycle. But for a brief moment Thursday, the U.S. company was worth more than some of the industry’s biggest names.
If you purchase through links in our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
