The memory chip crunch is paying off for this U.S. company
Key takeaways
- The AI boom has fueled dozens of new startups and minted a new class of billionaires.
- This era of RAMageddon isn t just a corporate problem.
- But amid this Mad Max-esque fight for memory chips, some companies are coming out ahead.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
The AI boom has fueled dozens of new startups and minted a new class of billionaires. It has also produced a serious shortage of memory chips — a critical component for compute-hungry AI models — which some predict could persist through 2027.
This era of RAMageddon isn t just a corporate problem. As demand spikes and squeezes supply, prices are rising and trickling down to consumers. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned just a week ago that price increases for its products are unavoidable.
But amid this Mad Max-esque fight for memory chips, some companies are coming out ahead. Micron, the largest U.S. computer-memory chip maker — with a market cap of $1.2 trillion — is one of them. That hasn t always been the case. The company s shares were trading around $83 in early 2024 (with a market cap of about $91 billion) and closed today at $1,048.51.