Micron Reports Record Margins As AI Fuels HBM Memory Demand

Techcrunch: Micron, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of high bandwidth memory chips, just became Wall Street’s newest AI infrastructure bet because AI servers now need huge amounts of HBM, DRAM, and NAND beside every GPU.

Micron’s case got stronger after Q3 revenue hit $41.46B, gross margin reached 84.6%, and Q4 guidance moved to $49 B-$51B. Current market cap ~$1.27 trillion.

Memory has usually been a boom-bust business because factories take years and billions to build, then prices collapse when too much supply arrives.

Micron is trying to break that cycle with 16 strategic customer agreements worth $22B, using deposits, pricing floors, and take-or-pay terms to make demand harder to cancel.

--- 📌 The current state of the global memory market.

This market has 2 main layers: DRAM, which includes the memory used next to CPUs and AI GPUs, and NAND flash, which is the storage inside SSDs, phones, and data centers.

In DRAM, the market is extremely concentrated, with Samsung at 38.5%, SK hynix at 28.8%, and Micron at 22.4% in 1Q26, meaning the top 3 control about 90% of global DRAM revenue.

In HBM, which is a premium submarket inside DRAM, the AI-specific memory used beside Nvidia GPUs, SK hynix is the market leader, with 58% share in 1Q26, while Samsung and Micron each had 21%.

HBM, or High Bandwidth Memory, is a special form of DRAM built for extreme data movement.

The difference is physical design.

Normal DRAM chips usually sit on memory modules or near the processor, and data moves through relatively narrower connections.

HBM stacks multiple DRAM dies vertically and places them very close to the GPU through advanced packaging, which creates a much wider data path.

That wider path gives AI chips much higher memory bandwidth, meaning the GPU can receive data faster instead of sitting idle.

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techcrunch .com/2026/06/28/why-wall-street-thinks-us-memory-maker-micron-is-the-next-nvidia/