NEW YORK, May 29, 2026, 10:05 EDT
- Micron climbed 4.6% to $966.24 Friday morning, pushing its market cap past $1.1 trillion.
- Wall Street raising price targets and gains in other memory-chip stocks helped drive the move.
- Samsung’s first HBM4E samples are hitting the AI memory market and bringing new pressure to the competition.
Micron Technology rose 4.6% to $966.24 early Friday, keeping up recent momentum that’s taken the chipmaker to about $1.10 trillion in market cap. Investors continue to pick up shares of the Boise, Idaho-based name, which some see as a key play in artificial intelligence this market cycle.
Investors are looking at memory as scarce infrastructure for AI data centers, moving away from old ideas of memory as a boom-and-bust commodity. High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, stacks multiple chips close to AI processors to speed up data transfer. HBM has turned into a main bottleneck for firms building large AI systems.
Micron crossed $1 trillion in market value for the first time this week, according to Reuters, as UBS put a new price target on the shares at $1,625. That’s the highest estimate among the 46 brokerages tracked by LSEG. Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, said Micron’s milestone is “an exclamation point” on the run in memory demand, adding the company is “at the center” of that trend. Reuters
Micron got another lift after more analyst upgrades. Vijay Rakesh at Mizuho moved his target to $1,150. Gil Luria at D.A. Davidson bumped his to $1,500. Tom O’Malley at Barclays set his target at $1,175. Investor’s Business Daily reported the calls cite memory demand from AI.
Micron bulls have new fuel after the company’s March report. Micron posted fiscal Q2 revenue at $23.86 billion, jumping from $8.05 billion last year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said on the call that the company hit all-time highs on revenue, gross margin, EPS, and free cash flow. “In the AI era, memory has become a strategic asset for our customers,” Mehrotra said. Micron Technology
SK Hynix joined the $1 trillion club this week, lining up with Samsung Electronics and Micron as memory chip prices moved higher. Ongoing demand for high-end chips is keeping supply tight. “We expect memory chip demand to continue exceeding supply by 2028 to keep price levels high,” said Kim Young-gun, analyst at Mirae Asset Securities in Seoul, in a note Reuters cited. Investing.com
Samsung flagged the main risk on Friday, saying it has now shipped samples of its 12-layer HBM4E chips. The company described these chips as over 20% faster than previous HBM4 models. Reuters reported this could help Samsung take back market share from SK Hynix and Micron. Jeff Kim, head of research at KB Securities-Jefferies, told Reuters that early leaders in HBM tend to win the bulk of orders.
Traders are focused on the risk that Samsung’s HBM4E might qualify with top AI customers soon. Micron could face price and share pressure just as bullish bets have picked up on the stock. A pause in AI capital spending or a faster DRAM supply ramp — DRAM is the primary working memory in servers and computers — would also push back against the idea that the cycle has changed.
U.S. stocks opened higher Friday, coming off fresh records for the major indexes set Thursday. The tape stays strong for the moment. Nasdaq trades from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday.
