Wall Street Bets on Micron as the Next AI Chip Giant
Micron’s market cap briefly surpassed Meta and Tesla as AI-driven memory shortages sent its stock up 236% in a month, making it a Wall Street darling.
Micron, the Boise, Idaho-based memory chip maker, has captured Wall Street’s attention. On Thursday, its market valuation briefly exceeded those of Meta and Tesla for the first time, though it settled on Friday at about $1.27 trillion, close to Meta’s $1.39 trillion and Tesla’s $1.42 trillion. The stock surged 236% in the past month alone, closing Friday at $1,132 per share, compared to below $100 before mid-2025.
The rally is driven by the AI data center boom, which has created a shortage of system memory chips, including DRAM, NAND, and especially High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). AI server builders like Nvidia and hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google, Meta, and Oracle are buying huge volumes, forcing other companies like Dell and HP to hoard memory. This supply crunch, dubbed "RAMageddon," is expected to persist into 2027 and has already raised prices of consumer electronics like Apple products and Xbox consoles.
Micron reported blockbuster fiscal third-quarter results: revenue quadrupled year-over-year to $41.45 billion, and profit surged from $1.88 billion to $28.2 billion. The company guided for fourth-quarter revenue between $49 billion and $51 billion.
To mitigate historical boom-and-bust cycles in the memory industry, Micron has signed 16 long-term strategic customer agreements, including with Nvidia and AI lab Anthropic, which it says will fundamentally transform its business model. Analyst Sebastien Naji of William Blair noted that demand growth outpaces new cleanroom capacity and that the agreements improve revenue visibility, reiterating an Outperform rating.
Whether Micron can sustain its momentum without a downturn remains to be seen, but for a moment on Thursday, this U.S. memory maker was worth more than some of the industry’s biggest names.
