The paradox of Micron is that even as its stock has soared 700% over the past year, it still has an underwhelming valuation. That’s because memory chips are viewed as a cyclical commodity—in the same basket as wheat or copper.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra thinks the market is wrong and the stock could be drastically undervalued. But it’s worth taking his argument with a grain of salt.

The stock does look incredibly cheap. The memory-chip company trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of around 6.4 times, according to FactSet, compared with an average forward PE of 20.6 times for the PHLX Semiconductor Index.

Mehrotra wants the narrative to change and for memory to lose its commodity status. “Memory is the strategic infrastructure for AI. It is no longer a commodity, it is high value,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

But that’s a dangerous assumption to make. Just because something is valuable and enjoying a lengthy cycle of heightened demand doesn’t mean it’s not a commodity—just look at gold.

The key to determining whether memory is more than a commodity is if Micron’s customers would refuse to switch to a cheaper option, such as Chinese-made memory. At the moment, China’s limited production capacity and political obstacles mean Micron can largely sidestep that issue.

But customers like Apple are testing memory components from Chinese company CXMT, suggesting at least part of Micron’s market is vulnerable should supply become available.

Even if memory does stop being a commodity, that’s not necessarily great news for Micron, which dominates the market alongside South Korean rivals SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics due to the cutthroat economics of the industry only supporting a few major players.

If memory-chip providers are assigned permanently higher valuations, expect other competitors to enter the market—Intel has already hinted it might be interested in returning to a business it abandoned decades ago.

Micron might be undervalued on the basis that the market still hasn’t fully understood the scale of demand for memory, but it’s still a commodity provider until proven otherwise.