Micron, the Boise, Idaho-based memory chip maker, has captured the hearts of Wall Street. Whether or not this love affair lasts will largely depend on how long the shortage of AI-driven memory chips continues.
Micron has pledged to strengthen its position over the long term to withstand sudden drops in demand or excess capacity. And Wall Street began to believe it, too, with Micron briefly surpassing the market valuations of Meta and Tesla for the first time on Thursday, but by Friday it had fallen again to nearly match them.
Specifically, Micron closed Friday with a market cap of nearly $1.27 trillion, compared to Meta’s $1.39 trillion and Tesla’s $1.42 trillion. Micron’s stock price has soared more than 236% in the last month alone, closing Friday at $1,132 per share. By comparison, the company spent years at less than $100 per share through mid-2025.
This is a dizzying leap forward for the company, which at the time most consumers associated with the small memory cards commonly needed to boost the storage of PCs, smartphones, and other devices.
Wall Street isn’t enthusiastic about the product line. Micron is benefiting from a boom in AI data center construction, which has created a shortage of both DRAM and NAND system memory chips that Micron makes, especially high-bandwidth memory (HBM). A single AI server requires much more memory than a laptop.
AI system manufacturers like Nvidia and hyperscalers that build their own systems are hoarding large amounts of memory from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google, Meta, and Oracle. This has forced every other company that needs memory, from PC makers like Dell and HP to other types of device makers, to stock up on memory as well.
This shortage, known as Ramageddon, is predicted to last until 2027. And it’s already driving up the prices of Apple products and consumer electronics like Xbox consoles.
Micron last week announced impressive third-quarter results as the entire tech industry clamored for more memory. Revenue quadrupled from the same period last year to $41.45 billion, and profits soared from $1.88 billion to $28.2 billion over the same period. Micron also gave a positive outlook, expecting fourth-quarter sales to be between $49 billion and $51 billion.
And Wall Street, eager to find more AI-related public companies with the potential to be as successful as NVIDIA, became even more obsessed.
A historical problem for memory chip makers like Micron and Samsung is that building manufacturing facilities to increase production capacity is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. And demand often falls at the same time that companies are able to increase production capacity, creating an oversupply and subsequent price decline.
Micron got ahead of the AI bust conversation by highlighting a series of long-term supply contracts with Nvidia and AI research institute Anthropic that will likely protect it. In its earnings call, the company said it had signed 16 strategic customer agreements across data center, consumer and automotive market segments, which it expects will fundamentally transform its business model.
This seems to have convinced many analysts that the company has the potential to become another profitable investment over the long term. Demand growth continues to outpace the rate at which new cleanroom space can come online, William Blair technology analyst Sebastian Nagy said in a research note.
“We see the potential for more sustainable earnings growth and reiterate our Outperform rating, given ASP’s continued growth in the coming quarters and a likely improving revenue outlook due to the rapid expansion of a series of long-term agreements (SCAs) with key customers,” Nagy wrote.
It remains to be seen whether Micron can truly survive in the long term without a bust cycle. But for a brief moment on Thursday, the American company was worth more than some of the industry’s giants.
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