Micron Technology's stock price surged 38% in a single week, and its market value has exceeded US$840 billion

[ Gearbest Technology News]Affected by the global shortage of memory chips, Micron Technology’s stock price rose sharply this week. As of Friday's close, Micron's stock price was at $746.81, a single-day increase of more than 15%, a cumulative increase of nearly 38% this week, and a cumulative increase of nearly 84% in the past month. It was Micron's best week since December 2008, when its shares traded below $5 in the wake of the Great Recession. According to LSEG data, Micron's current market value exceeds US$840 billion.

Micron

The strong demand for memory chips mainly benefits from the advancement of artificial intelligence hardware construction. Bank of America and Evercore pointed out that capital expenditures by ultra-large-scale cloud vendors may exceed US$1 trillion by the end of next year, and memory chip demand is becoming a symbol of the current AI construction stage. Although graphics processors have previously been the focus of AI hardware construction, memory, storage and CPU are increasingly receiving attention. Memory manufacturers' selling prices and profit margins continue to expand amid a shortage of memory chips, while hyperscale cloud players complain about rising costs for end-user goods and services. Among them, DRAM and NAND are the two types of memory with the strongest demand, both of which are crucial for AI processing.

Multiple stock research reports show that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix together produce more than 90% of the world's DRAM. Similar to Micron, South Korean memory chip makers also performed strongly. Samsung this week joined Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and others in the trillion-dollar club. It is also reported that SK Hynix is ​​approaching investment intentions from many global technology companies. These companies hope to invest in new dedicated memory production lines to increase production, including equipment financing transactions related to UV lithography machines provided by customers.

Micron isn't the only chip stock doing well. AMD rose 26% this week, hitting a 52-week high on Friday, with a market value of more than $740 billion. Intel shares are up 25% this week and have more than doubled over the past month as the CPU maker is widely seen as making a strong comeback.

Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh said in a research report this week that Micron is still in a good position in the memory field. Its leading DRAM process helps reduce costs year by year, while in NAND, the increasing number of layers can improve costs and increase wafer production capacity.