Micron stock climbs as CEO highlights AI demand for memory
Micron The stock rose nearly 8% on Friday as investors turned to buy AI chip supply chain shares after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company reported strong earnings on Thursday, signaling continued AI infrastructure spending.
Shares of Micron, a memory and storage manufacturer for artificial intelligence systems, increased by 56 percent last month due to a worldwide memory shortage and increased demand. Memory is used in AI systems to keep large amounts of data close to the graphics processing unit, or GPU, so it can run large AI models without slowing down.
““AI-driven demand is growing rapidly,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “It’s real. It’s here, and we need more and more memory to meet that demand.”
Mehrotra said Micron is spending $200 billion to build more manufacturing capacity in the U.S., including two factories in Idaho and a 600,000-foot facility in Clay, New York, on which the company broke ground Friday. Mehrotra said it will take several years to build the facilities, including clean rooms and production equipment. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined groundbreaking. Micron said it would invest $100 billion in this factory.
He added that Micron is working to produce more chips at its existing facilities in the near future.
Micron expected 10% growth in server memory at the beginning of 2025, but by the end of the year this growth was seen to reach “high teens” levels. Mehrotra also said the company is seeing stronger-than-expected growth in memory and storage for PCs.
“We see this squeeze continuing into 2027, so we see resilient industry fundamentals driven by AI demand for the foreseeable future,” Mehrotra said. he said.
The rush to meet the memory demand of companies such as Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices And Google This has led to shortages, with key ingredient prices expected to rise an estimated 55% in the first quarter, CNBC previously reported.
