NEW YORK, Jan 6, 2026, 11:42 EST — Regular session
- Sandisk shares jump about 24% in heavy trading, touching a record high.
- A fresh push in memory prices and AI-linked spending keeps storage and chip names in focus.
- Investors watch Samsung’s early earnings update Thursday and Sandisk’s Jan. 29 results for pricing signals.
Sandisk Corp shares jumped about 24% on Tuesday to $339.20, after hitting a record $342.81, as investors piled into memory and data-storage names tied to artificial-intelligence spending. Western Digital climbed about 14%, Micron rose about 6%, and Seagate gained nearly 12%.
The move underlined how quickly sentiment has turned back to the “memory” trade at the start of the year, with traders betting tight supply will keep pricing firm. Samsung co-CEO TM Roh told Reuters on Monday the shortage was “unprecedented,” as chipmakers divert capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a type of DRAM used in AI servers, squeezing supply elsewhere. 1
Sandisk has its own catalyst in the mix. The company on Monday unveiled the SANDISK Optimus brand for its internal solid-state drives, rebranding products previously sold under Western Digital’s WD_BLACK and WD Blue labels, and pitching the top tier for “AI PCs, workstations, or high-end PCs.” “The SANDISK Optimus brand redefines what performance means for consumer needs,” Heidi Arkinstall, Sandisk’s vice president of global consumer brand and digital marketing, said. 2
Sandisk, a maker of NAND flash memory and solid-state drives, became an independent public company after separating from Western Digital in February 2025 and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker “SNDK,” the company said. Unlike DRAM, which holds data temporarily so computers can run programs, NAND flash stores data and sits inside SSDs used in PCs and data centers. 3
Investors are also looking to Samsung’s early earnings update on Thursday for more clues on how far the price cycle can run. TrendForce data showed DDR5 DRAM prices jumped 314% in the fourth quarter, and the researcher expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise 55% to 60% in the current quarter; “as conventional DRAM prices continue to surge,” Samsung “stands to gain relatively more,” TrendForce analyst Avril Wu said. 4
Still, memory cycles can turn fast. Any sign that supply constraints are easing — or that higher component costs are starting to curb demand for PCs, smartphones or data-center gear — would test the rally and leave high-multiple winners exposed to sharp pullbacks.
Next up, investors will turn to Sandisk’s fiscal second-quarter report on Jan. 29, when it is scheduled to hold its earnings call after the close, and to SK hynix’s results later in the month for a read-through on memory pricing and order trends. 5
