New York, January 30, 2026, 10:06 EST — Regular session
- Sandisk is gaining early, boosted by a bullish outlook and a new extended supply deal linked to AI data-center demand.
- Investors now eye storage as a potential bottleneck in the AI rollout, extending concerns beyond just compute chips.
Shares of Sandisk (SNDK) jumped roughly 17% to $631.93 on Friday after the flash-storage company raised its quarterly guidance beyond Wall Street’s forecasts. The firm also announced it extended a crucial supply deal with partner Kioxia through 2034. Sandisk projected fiscal third-quarter revenue hitting a midpoint of $4.6 billion, with adjusted earnings per share at $14—far exceeding analysts’ estimates of $2.77 billion in revenue and $4.37 EPS, per LSEG data. CEO David Goeckeler summed it up: “Customers prefer supply over price.” (Reuters)
This shift is crucial as investors now see “AI spend” less as an automatic win and more as a trial. When the spending leads to actual orders and higher margins, stocks benefit. If it ends up just as sunk cost, they don’t.
The storage narrative is shifting. While training a model carries a hefty price tag, the real strain comes from inference — when an AI model processes user queries. This stage demands rapid data transfer, ramping up the need for flash-based storage and its supply chain. That surge can quickly translate into stronger pricing power.
The broader U.S. market kicked off lower after President Donald Trump nominated former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh to head the central bank, sharpening the spotlight on monetary policy. At the open, the Dow slipped 0.32%, the S&P 500 declined 0.33%, and the Nasdaq dipped 0.43%. (Reuters)
Sandisk is embedded deep in the infrastructure of AI data centers. The company sells NAND flash, a memory technology that’s key for solid-state drives (SSDs)—the devices that store massive datasets and deliver them rapidly to processors. While DRAM, the speedier “working” memory near the CPU, has dominated headlines, flash memory is now being pulled into that spotlight as well.
During Thursday’s earnings call, the company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of roughly $3.025 billion, marking a 31% increase from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $6.20. The CEO drew attention when he said, “Data center is not a commodity NAND market,” signaling a shift in the industry. (Investing)
Peers are aligned in their outlook. Western Digital predicted quarterly revenue would beat estimates on Thursday, citing strong demand for hard drives and flash storage linked to AI servers as a growth driver, alongside steady pricing. Reuters also highlighted that Sandisk’s shares jumped roughly 12% in after-hours trading following its earnings report. (Reuters)
But the trade can turn on a dime. Memory remains a cyclical sector, and a sudden jump in supply—or a slowdown in data-center expansions if budgets tighten—can drag prices down before executives wrap up their next earnings call.
The next catalysts are just around the corner. Wall Street is gearing up to shift focus to earnings from major cloud spenders like Alphabet and Amazon next week, searching for signs that AI infrastructure investment is either ramping up or tapering off. Attention will also turn to the U.S. jobs report on Feb. 6, a key data point that could reshape expectations for rate cuts and risk appetite. “For those companies where expectations have become very, very lofty, the onus is going to be on them to deliver,” said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors. (Reuters)
