Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) saw its stock price surge 637% over the past year, fueled by exponential earnings growth from severe global memory shortages.
The rally is driven by unprecedented artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion, which requires advanced memory architectures for data centers running AI training, inference, and agentic workloads.
Demand for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash storage has skyrocketed.
High-bandwidth memory (HBM) production, which uses three times the silicon wafer capacity of conventional DRAM, has further tightened supply, according to Bank of America.
Memory manufacturers have shifted production priority to HBM to maximize profitability, creating severe deficits in traditional components.
Taiwan-based controller manufacturer Phison reported that NAND flash prices nearly doubled in the last six months of 2026.
Third-party industry estimates show DRAM prices jumped 170% over the past year as supply tightened across all compute tiers.
Analysts project the HBM market will expand sevenfold by 2030, reaching $246 billion in annual revenue as chipmakers integrate more high-bandwidth memory into custom processors, graphics cards, and servers.
