Catenaa, Tuesday, May 05, 2026- Micron Technology stock rose about 10% on Tuesday after a report from research firm IDC argued that the memory-chip market could break from its historical pattern of dramatic booms and busts.
According to the IDC report, the memory segment sits “at the epicenter of this shift” as the global semiconductor market undergoes what the firm called a “seismic transformation.”
Jeff Janukowicz, IDC’s research vice president for semiconductor manufacturing, wrote that “this time is different,” with AI driving an “unprecedented inflection point” for memory.
The report contrasted this new dynamic with the past, when memory demand tracked consumer spending far more closely; today, hyperscalers are paying premium prices for a fundamentally different, higher-grade class of memory and are actively locking in supply contracts to guarantee access.
On the revenue side, IDC projected DRAM sales could reach $418.6 billion this year, nearly three times last year’s level, while NAND revenue was forecast to climb to $174.1 billion, more than doubling year over year. Micron makes both DRAM and NAND products.
Separately on Tuesday, Micron said it had started commercial shipments of the Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD, a 245-terabyte drive the company is billing as the highest-capacity commercially available solid-state drive on the market, according to Tipranks.
Micron called the drive “a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers,” a launch timed to a period when demand for storage and memory across data center infrastructure continues to run at elevated levels.
The stock’s run over the past year now exceeds 600% in total gains, and Tuesday’s trading pushed Micron’s intraday market capitalization to roughly $690 billion, days after it first eclipsed the $600 billion threshold on Friday, according to MarketWatch.
Other memory and storage companies also moved higher on the IDC report. Western Digital stock rose more than 7%, and Sandisk stock gained almost 9%.
Demand tied to AI infrastructure buildout has been a central driver of Micron’s recent performance, with the company reporting that every available unit of its HBM3E and HBM4 high-bandwidth memory has been contractually committed through the end of 2026, according to Zacks.
Fiscal second-quarter results showed revenue of $23.86 billion, a 196% year-over-year increase, alongside non-GAAP EPS of $12.20.
