Why Wall Street thinks US memory maker Micron is the next Nvidia

Micron, the Boise, Idaho-based memory chip maker, has captured the heart of Wall Street. Whether the love affair will continue will depend heavily on how long the AI-driven memory chip supply crisis lasts.

Micron promises it has strengthened its position for the long term, allowing it to withstand a sudden drop in demand or overcapacity in supply. And Wall Street has become a believer, allowing Micron to briefly surpass the market’s valuation Meta and Tesla for the first time on Thursday, although it floated back down to nearly match them on Friday.

Specifically, Micron ended Friday’s trading with a market cap of nearly $1.27 trillion, while Meta was worth $1.39 trillion and Tesla was worth $1.42 trillion. Shares of Micron are up more than 236% in the past month alone, closing Friday at $1,132 per share. By comparison, before mid-2025, it spent years after years at less than $100 per share.

It’s a staggering increase for a company that most consumers associated with the small memory cards that were once often needed to boost the storage of PCs, smartphones or other devices.

Wall Street doesn’t sweat that product line. Micron is benefiting from the AI ​​data center buildout boom that has led to a shortage of system memory chips, both DRAM and NAND, that Micron makes, especially High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). A single AI server requires much more memory than a laptop.

Manufacturers of AI systems such as Nvidia, but also the hyperscalers that build their own systems, are purchasing large amounts of memory, such as Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google, Meta and Oracle. This forces all other companies that need memory to hoard it as well, from PC makers like Dell and HP to other types of device makers.

This lack of supply, called RAMageddon, is predicted to continue in 2027. And it’s already driving up the price of consumer electronics like Apple products and Xbox consoles.

While the entire tech industry was clamoring for more memory, Micron delivered blockbuster third-quarter numbers last week. Revenue quadrupled year-on-year to $41.45 billion, and profits shot up from $1.88 billion to $28.2 billion over the same period. Micron also gave a positive outlook, predicting fourth-quarter revenue in the range of $49 billion to $51 billion.

And Wall Street, eager to find more public AI-related companies that could do as well as Nvidia, became even more enamored.

The historical problem for memory chip makers like Micron and Samsung is that building manufacturing facilities to increase capacity is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. And demand often drops just as companies can increase capacity, creating a glut and driving down prices.

Micron got ahead of every AI problem by emphasizing a series of long-term supply agreements, including with Nvidia and AI Lab Anthropicthat it would presumably protect. The company said in its earnings presentation that it has signed 16 strategic customer agreements across the data center, consumer and automotive market segments, which it expects fundamentally transform its business model.

That seemed to convince some analysts that this company could once again be a profitable long-term investment. In a research note, William Blair technical analyst Sebastien Naji noted that demand growth continues to outpace the speed at which new cleanroom space can come online.

“Given the high likelihood of continued ASP growth in the coming quarters and improving revenue visibility through a rapidly growing set of long-term agreements (SCAs) with key customers, we see potential for more sustainable earnings growth and reiterate our Outperform rating,” Naji wrote.

Whether Micron can truly sustain itself in the long term without a failure cycle remains to be seen. But for a brief moment on Thursday, this American company was more valuable than some industry giants.