Micron
MU · NasdaqAmerica's only home-grown HBM maker, with every chip it can produce through 2026 already spoken for.
Who they are
Micron has been making memory chips in Boise, Idaho since 1978, long before AI made memory a headline business. It's the third major player in HBM alongside SK hynix and Samsung, and the only one headquartered in the United States — a detail that has become strategically relevant as US policymakers push for domestic semiconductor supply. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has run the company since 2017 and has spent 2026 openly framing the AI memory shortage as multi-year, not cyclical.
What they do
Micron produces DRAM, NAND flash, and HBM, with its newest HBM4 generation rated at over 11 Gbps — which the company describes as industry-leading speed — ramping toward high-yield volume production in the second calendar quarter of 2026 for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform. Micron designs its HBM4 base logic die and DRAM core dies entirely in-house, and has pioneered low-power DRAM (LPDRAM) for data centers, which uses roughly a third of the power of standard DDR memory. Its entire calendar-2026 HBM output, including HBM4, is fully committed under signed price-and-volume agreements.
How Micron makes money
Memory and storage chip sales, and the numbers have gone vertical: fiscal Q3 2026 revenue reached $41.46 billion, more than quadrupling from $9.3 billion a year earlier, with data center revenue alone exceeding $25 billion in the quarter, an annualized run rate above $100 billion. Gross margin hit a company record of 74.9%, and data center gross margin specifically reached 87% in one recent quarter. Micron has signed 16 long-term supply agreements spanning three to five years with data center operators and automakers, shifting roughly half its revenue away from spot pricing toward locked-in contract pricing. In July 2026, Mehrotra announced a $250 billion long-term investment plan through 2035 to expand US DRAM and HBM manufacturing.
The bigger trend
Mehrotra has said Micron can currently fulfill only 50% to two-thirds of customer demand, a structural supply deficit that Goldman Sachs has separately pegged as a 4.9% DRAM supply-demand gap — the most severe in 15 years. Micron, SK hynix, and Samsung together now supply more than 95% of global DRAM, and all three are running massive, simultaneous capacity expansions, which is the main risk analysts flag to the current pricing power: coordinated capacity additions could eventually normalize prices industry-wide.
Whether Micron can narrow the gap with SK hynix on HBM4 customer qualifications and Nvidia allocation share through 2027, since SK hynix still holds the leading position with Nvidia specifically. Also watch the same Vera Rubin base-die quality concerns flagged for SK hynix, since industry reports say they could affect Micron's HBM4 ramp as well.
Related companies
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Micron is the only US-headquartered manufacturer of high-bandwidth memory, competing against South Korea's SK hynix and Samsung Electronics, both of which currently hold larger shares of the global HBM market.
Micron has signed price-and-volume agreements covering its entire calendar-2026 HBM output, including HBM4, reflecting an industry-wide memory shortage that CEO Sanjay Mehrotra says the company can currently meet only 50% to two-thirds of.
Micron's data center revenue exceeded $25 billion in fiscal Q3 2026 alone, an annualized run rate above $100 billion, with data center gross margin reaching 87% in a recent quarter.
This page describes public value-chain positioning for informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, and inclusion here is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures reflect public reporting as of mid-2026 and may have changed since.