“How about this?” Trump wrote in a social-media post Thursday. “Micron, a GREAT American Company, announced that they are putting in 250 Million Dollars into the Trump Accounts for the future benefit of children . . . Thank you Micron!”
The memory-chip maker was falling early Thursday, down 4% at $990.3, after a sharp 10.6% drop in the previous session. The move came despite its rivals SK Hynix and Samsung tumbling in South Korean trading Thursday.
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Memory chips were once seen as an unglamorous business, but Micron is betting AI will change the game for good
Micron remains based in Boise, Idaho, and has survived multiple boom-and-bust memory cycles to become one of the world's top DRAM producers.
A little more than a year ago, Boise, Idaho, was known as a charming city boasting a tree-lined river greenbelt and a college football stadium with bright blue artificial turf.
Today, it's seen as a crucial hub of the artificial-intelligence boom.
Micron Technology $(MU)$ was founded nearly half a century ago in a dentist-office basement in Boise. Against a backdrop of fierce competition between U.S. and Japanese memory-chip firms, twin brothers Ward and Joe Parkinson, alongside Dennis Wilson and Doug Pitman, started the semiconductor-design company focused on dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM. Today, that technology underpins inference, or the running of AI models.
Micron remains based in Boise and has survived multiple boom-and-bust memory cycles to become one of the world's top DRAM producers, alongside South Korea's SK Hynix (KR:000660) and Samsung Electronics (KR:005930). The AI-driven surge in demand for DRAM has propelled Micron's stock to the forefront of a tech-heavy stock market, as AI spending shows no sign of slowing down and memory supply looks far from catching up. As one of the last strongholds of American chip making, Micron is not only crucial to the AI boom, but to the wider semiconductor supply chain - and the U.S.'s place in it.
In April 2025, Micron's stock was changing hands for $64.72, valuing the company at $72 billion, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Since then, the stock has soared by 1,407%, to $975.56 a share at Thursday's close, and Micron is now worth $1.1 trillion - making it the 10th-most valuable U.S. company.
Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) shares recently faced a downward pullback despite public praise from President Donald Trump and an announcement of a $250 million corporate commitment to federal "Trump Accounts".
Key Developments:
Corporate Investment: On June 30, 2026, Micron announced it would commit $250 million to the "Trump Accounts" child savings program, funding employee matches and seed deposits for children in its primary operating states.
Presidential Endorsement: President Trump publicly praised Micron on social media as a "Great" and "Hottest" company following the investment, while federal disclosures showed he also personally holds a substantial portfolio of MU stock.
Market Reaction: Despite the presidential backing and a previously strong run in 2026, MU shares dropped roughly 10% in early July alongside a broader semiconductor and tech-sector selloff.
Stock Performance: MU stock trades around the $975 to $1,000 range, significantly up year-to-date, but remains highly volatile as investors weigh the broader AI-driven memory chip cycle.
$SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$
$Micron Technology(MU)$
Both SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) and Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) have posted massive market gains in 2026 due to the AI-driven storage boom, though their performance profiles differ:
SanDisk (SNDK): Shares have soared over 700% as of mid-2026, driven by a faster growth rate and surging NAND flash demand. It acts as a more volatile, aggressive, and concentrated wager on NAND recovery.
Micron (MU): Shares have more than tripled as the stock recently crossed a $1 trillion valuation. It is viewed as a slower, steadier "blue-chip" with a diversified portfolio of DRAM, NAND, and AI-critical High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM).
Performance & Valuation Metrics ComparisonVolatility & Risk: SanDisk exhibits higher volatility (44.15%) compared to Micron's 38.17%, making it inherently riskier.
Forward P/E: Despite SanDisk's hyper-growth, forward price-to-earnings ratios have compressed. Micron trades at a forward P/E of roughly 9-10, whereas SanDisk trades at a premium of about 11-12.
Sales Growth: SanDisk shows faster sequential sales growth, with expectations of over 100% growth for fiscal 2027. Micron is modeling more modest, steady, and diversified sales expansion.
Micron Technology (MU) Investment Thesis
Micron Technology faces moderating memory price increases as supply and demand rebalance, but AI data center demand remains robust.
MU's gross margins are supported by long-term supply contracts, with 40% of revenue soon tied to fixed or capped pricing.
Capacity expansions—including Idaho-1, Singapore HBM, and Tonglou—will drive the next growth phase starting FY'27 amid industry-wide supply increases.
Key risks include labor negotiations in Taiwan, potential customer inventory build-ups, and margin sensitivity in non-data center segments.
Dell (DELL) COO captured this sentiment, noting that some public sector customers have fixed budgets and will adjust purchase volumes accordingly. Other customers are reportedly changing the configuration of their products to optimize memory capacity.
That is not to say that memory prices will go down. Demand still exceeds supply, and AI demand is pulling capacity from other sectors. However, it suggests that the pace of unit price growth, which lifted Micron's (MU) sales and profitability in the past few months, can't be relied on to drive growth going into FY'27.
MU has prepared investors for this eventuality.
In FQ4'26, MU's management expects the memory price tailwinds to slow down, despite demand still exceeding supply.
Our fiscal Q4 gross margin outlook reflects a meaningful moderation in the rate of price increases – MU Q3'26 Earnings Call
When asked how management reconciles decelerating price growth and widening supply/demand imbalance during the KeyBanc Technology Leadership Forum, MU's Chief Business Officer noted that MU is optimizing prices at levels that sustain long-term demand.
There is a limit to what Micron can charge customers, and price-driven growth will likely decelerate going forward.
But MU still could generate meaningful returns to investors without price-growth support. The next leg of MU's growth is volumes, and despite the capacity expansion, reports indicate that demand will still exceed supply, supporting current prices. During the KeyBanc Technology conference, management said that it expects the supply to be tighter than it already is going into 2027.
Secondly, even if supply/demand falls off balance because of capacity expansion, MU still has SCAs to fall back on, which tie a significant portion of revenue to long-term supply agreements with price floors, fixed-pricing, or indexed pricing contracts, in addition to other accommodative terms.
We expect gross margins from our strategic customer agreements with price bands, even at floor pricing levels, to yield gross margins well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle – MU FQ3'26 SEC Filings
In FY'27, Wall Street expects adjusted EPS to more than double, reaching $158/share. At the current price, this translates to roughly 7x PE. That's an earnings yield of 14%, which is pretty attractive considering the SCA multi-year protections and growing demand on the back of the secular AI trends. So, there is a strong valuation argument here, augmenting the growth story.
$Palantir Technologies Inc.(PLTR)$
Palantir Technologies Inc. remains a Strong Buy, as intensifying competition erodes its historical moats in AI workflow orchestration and government compliance.
PLTR's elevated valuation—84x forward GAAP earnings and a 33x forward P/S—appears unjustified given accelerating disruption risk from foundation model companies.
Growth rates remain strong, but new entrants with rapid FedRAMP certification and advanced LLMs threaten PLTR's pricing power and margin sustainability.
Internal competition and in-house solutions are raising PLTR risks, while the market is starting to price in slower growth and shrinking differentiation.