MW Micron just did in three days what once took 37 years
By Christine Ji
Wall Street is betting that the AI boom has ushered in a high-growth era for Micron and its stock
Micron has fully sold out of its 2026 inventory, and customers are signing multiyear prepayment agreements.
Micron Technology has seen explosive growth this year as the artificial-intelligence boom drives extreme demand for memory chips. And the company is hitting new milestones every few days.
Shares of Micron $(MU)$ closed at an all-time high of $640.20 on Tuesday, giving the company a market capitalization of $722 billion. The stock is up another 2% on Wednesday, taking the intraday market cap to $737 billion.
Micron's stock has rallied 124% year to date, making it the seventh-best performer in the S&P 500 SPX over that span.
The company has added over $100 billion in market cap over the last three trading sessions. On Friday, Micron's market cap surpassed the $600 billion mark for the first time, and on Tuesday it passed $700 billion. For context, it took Micron 37 years to amass its first $100 billion in market cap, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Read: Here's just how quickly Micron has risen up the ranks of the top U.S companies
As one of only three companies controlling the supply of high-bandwidth memory - the others being Samsung (KR:005930) and SK Hynix (KR:000660) - Micron has capitalized on an unprecedented memory supercycle. HBM has become a critical bottleneck in the production of AI chips, and customers are willing to pay premiums and provide multiyear prepayments to secure supply. Micron has completely sold out of inventory for the rest of 2026. On the company's latest earnings call, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said that Micron can only fulfill 50% to 67% of customer demand in the medium term.
Accompanying this demand surge is rapid growth in earnings per share. The company posted $12.20 in adjusted EPS last quarter, up from $1.56 a year before. Despite the stock rally, Micron is actually getting cheaper on a fundamental basis: Its forward P/E ratio has compressed to 7.7x as earnings grow faster than the share price.
More: Micron and Sandisk shares could soar further thanks to a software-like subscription model
While the memory industry has historically been cyclical, some analysts believe the AI boom has fundamentally changed the business model to become high-growth. As a result, the stock could continue powering higher.
The rising trend of customer prepayments offers greater visibility into future revenue and could lead to a valuation premium due to the subscription-like nature of long-term arrangements, Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note last week.
D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria initiated coverage on Micron with a buy rating last week and a price target of $1,000.
"We believe artificial intelligence is creating a longer-than-usual memory cycle as compute deployment and demand generation exist in a positive feedback loop, creating a structurally higher ceiling for memory pricing and demand," Luria wrote last week.
"The market is still framing the cycle through the lens of prior downturns, which appears to underestimate the demand environment," he added.
Read more: Micron's stock soars as new report throws cold water on the bear case: 'This time is different.'
-Christine Ji
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May 06, 2026 10:09 ET (14:09 GMT)
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