New York, Jan 8, 2026, 06:25 ET — Premarket
- Micron shares down 1.1% premarket at $339.55 after Wednesday’s close
- Company set a Jan. 16 groundbreaking for its planned $100 billion New York “megafab”
- Traders weigh tight memory pricing signals and Friday’s U.S. jobs report
Micron Technology (MU) shares fell 1.1% in premarket trading on Thursday to $339.55. The memory-chip maker said it will break ground on its $100 billion “megafab” project in Onondaga County, New York on Jan. 16, after clearing environmental reviews and permits. 1
The date puts a concrete marker on a project investors see as central to Micron’s long-term supply plan, just as AI servers soak up DRAM — dynamic random access memory used in servers, PCs and phones — and strain capacity. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called the groundbreaking “a pivotal moment” and said the investment reinforces Micron’s position as the only U.S. manufacturer of memory. 2
The early slide in MU came as U.S. stock index futures moved lower ahead of Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, with Nasdaq 100 E-minis down 0.31% in the morning. “A move towards more government intervention would create uncertainty and add to some risk premium in the markets,” Jefferies economist Mohit Kumar said. 3
Micron is also coming off a sharp run. The stock jumped 10% on Tuesday and hit record highs alongside storage names SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at CES in Las Vegas, detailed a new layer of storage technology. “All those capex estimates … are going to be revised higher again,” Argent Capital portfolio manager Jed Ellerbroek said. 4
Pricing signals out of Asia have kept the sector on edge. Samsung Electronics projected record quarterly profit on Thursday, underscoring how tight supply and AI-driven demand are lifting conventional memory prices; TrendForce data showed contract prices for a type of DRAM rose 313% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, and the firm expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 55% to 60% this quarter. 5
Micron also pushed product news this week, unveiling its 3610 NVMe solid-state drive using PCIe Gen5 — a faster connection standard for storage — and quad-level cell (QLC) flash. The company said the drive can hit 11,000 megabytes per second in sequential read speeds and pack up to 4 terabytes in a single-sided M.2 2230 form factor; executive Mark Montierth said it will support “on-device AI” in ultra-thin machines. 6
On the Street, bullish notes have followed the run-up. UBS raised its price target on Micron to $400 from $300, saying AI is making DRAM more strategic and that faster high-bandwidth memory (HBM) obsolescence could limit customer inventory build-ups — a shift the bank said could blunt the industry’s historic boom-bust swings. HBM is a premium form of DRAM used next to AI processors. 7
But the memory trade can turn fast. Analysts have cautioned that sharp price spikes can squeeze PC and smartphone makers, cool demand and punish late-chasing momentum, even as chipmakers ramp spending to add capacity. 8
Next up for MU is whether U.S. data on jobs steadies risk appetite into the open, and whether pricing talk stays hot as buyers negotiate contracts — with Micron’s Jan. 16 New York groundbreaking the next company catalyst on the calendar.
