NEW YORK, May 30, 2026, 14:02 EDT
- Micron closed at $971 on Friday, putting its market cap near $1.11 trillion.
- Traders now price in almost a 10% swing next week after the recent sharp rally.
- The AI rally has moved past chips and is hitting memory now, with supply still tight.
Micron Technology closed the week with a market cap over $1 trillion, shifting from its old role as a cyclical memory-chip play to a top pick for investors betting on AI data centers. Shares last changed hands at $971, putting its value near $1.11 trillion.
The timing is key as investors look past just processor stocks like Nvidia and start moving into memory chip names that handle the high-speed data needs of AI. Micron is in focus too, since options markets are pricing in a move of almost 10% next week after the stock’s record rally.
It comes as stocks trade strong. U.S. markets were closed Saturday after the S&P 500 logged its seventh straight gain and a ninth weekly advance on Friday. Tech led the move, with Dell Technologies up 32.8% after saying it saw better demand for AI computing.
Micron hit the trillion-dollar level for a short time Tuesday, after UBS boosted its price target to $1,625 from $535—the highest target out of 46 brokerages tracked by LSEG, according to Reuters. “Micron sits at the center of the data-center demand story,” B. Riley Wealth’s Art Hogan told Reuters. The company said its high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, supply for 2026 is already sold out, and HBM4 production has started. HBM is stacked memory used near AI processors to speed up data movement. Reuters
Micron has numbers to back up the rerating. The company posted fiscal second-quarter revenue of $23.86 billion, up from $13.64 billion last quarter and $8.05 billion a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $12.20 per share. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said memory is now “a strategic asset” for AI customers. Micron projected fiscal third-quarter revenue of around $33.5 billion. Micron Technology
Memory-chip stocks top oil giants as market values surge
The Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column said Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron, the world’s top three memory-chip makers, each now have a market value above $1 trillion. That’s about 22% higher than the combined value of the top three oil firms. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri said big cloud companies seem ready to pay up for “multiyear supply visibility,” which could mean dynamic random-access memory is less volatile than it was in past cycles. The Wall Street Journal
Samsung is now sending out samples of its 12-layer HBM4E chips to customers, as it tries to win back share in AI memory. SK Hynix hit a $1.12 trillion market value this week, boosted by demand for advanced memory for AI.
Memory has seen boom-bust cycles before. Business Insider’s Alistair Barr said fewer suppliers and more long-term deals might keep the cycle in check, but the risks are still there. If manufacturers ramp up capacity, if new competitors arrive, if AI demand slips or a new technology cuts memory needs, the old cycle could make a comeback.
Micron’s fiscal Q3 call is up next on June 24 at 4:30 p.m. EDT. The market will watch to see if pricing, supply agreements, and HBM demand are strong enough after the stock’s run that surprised most analysts.
Micron isn’t trading like a back-end supplier anymore. Right now, the market is treating it as a critical AI bottleneck, so there’s not much margin for missteps.
