Storage shares continued to rally in overnight trading. Micron stock jumped 2.7%; SanDisk up 1.8%.

Micron stock has surged 216.7% YTD, wildly outperforming the broader market and many top tech titans. The stock has not risen solely because of hype. It is rising because AI has fundamentally altered the memory sector, and Micron is at the forefront of that transformation.

Its core products include DRAM, NAND flash, and High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) used by cloud providers, PC and smartphone makers, automotive companies, and industrial customers.

AI-driven data center expansion is reshaping memory demand. Micron's portfolio of HBM, high-capacity server DRAM, and data center SSDs benefits from the increasing amount of memory and storage content per server. HBM has been crucial to Micron's growth story. The company has already signed pricing and volume agreements for its entire calendar 2026 HBM supply, including next-generation HBM4 goods. Micron now forecasts the HBM total addressable market to increase at a 40% annual rate through 2028, rising from $35 billion in 2025 to approximately $100 billion by 2028, two years earlier than previously anticipated. Notably, the projected HBM market would be larger than the entire DRAM business by 2024.

HBM demand is also intensifying supply constraints, as each unit of HBM requires much more DRAM capacity than standard DDR5. Memory, according to Micron, is not a commodity component but rather a strategic asset required for AI cognition, performance, and real-time decision-making in data centers and edge applications.

Micron continues to extend its manufacturing leadership, having led the industry for four consecutive DRAM nodes and three NAND nodes. Its 1-gamma DRAM node is ramping up and will drive most DRAM bit growth in calendar year 2026, accounting for the majority of output in the second half of the year. Micron is ramping up its G9 node with high yields for data center and client SSDs. G9 technology will be the key driver of NAND bit growth in 2026, with the potential to become Micron's largest NAND node later in fiscal 2026. During the quarter, the company also achieved a record mix of QLC NAND, maintaining its position as a leader in high-capacity storage.