** Shares of memory chipmakers drop in early trading, among the biggest laggards on the S&P 500 .SPX

** Google Research in a blog post late on Tuesday announced TurboQuant, a compression algorithm that it says helps AI systems use much less memory without hurting performance

** Sandisk SNDK.O slides 3.2% and Micron Technology MU.O drops 3.4%

** Seagate Technology STX.O falls 1.6%, while Western Digital WDC.O loses 0.3%

** Micron and Sandisk were among the top 10 most trending stocks on retail investor forum Stocktwits

** Memory and data storage chipmakers surged in 2025 amid staggering demand for hard drives in the global race to scale AI-related infrastructure

(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru)

((Shashwat.Chauhan@thomsonreuters.com))