The semiconductor industry has long been defined by boom-and-bust cycles, but Micron Technology is rewriting that script. The Boise-based memory maker briefly crossed a $1 trillion market capitalisation at the end of May 2026, a milestone that would have been unthinkable just two years ago. Shares now trade at €868.20 on the Xetra exchange, a fresh 52-week high and a 4.21% single-day jump. The stock is up 222.75% since January and an eye-watering 912.01% over the past twelve months. Yet the real story is not the price action — it is the unprecedented structural scarcity that underpins it.
Micron’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production for 2026 is already fully booked, and the company has responded with the largest capital spending programme in its history. The investment budget for the current fiscal year has been raised to more than $25 billion, a $5 billion increase from prior plans and a year-on-year expansion of over $10 billion. The build-out spans three continents: a new two-storey wafer fab in Singapore dedicated to advanced NAND for AI data centres, a 1-alpha DRAM ramp in Manassas, Virginia that will quadruple the site’s DDR4 output for automotive and industrial clients, and expanded assembly and test capacity in Malaysia. Some 3,000 new positions are being created across packaging, engineering and automation.
Management describes the gap between supply and demand as historically wide. Even with this aggressive expansion, Micron does not expect material new capacity to reach the market before the end of 2027, with full ramp-up following in 2028. Hyperscalers currently secure only about 60% of their memory requirements on the open market. To hedge against spot-price volatility, Micron has locked in long-term fixed-price contracts with key customers, effectively turning HBM into a toll-booth business for the AI infrastructure build-out.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Micron?
Several analyst houses have upgraded their targets in response to the tightening environment. Susquehanna’s Mehdi Hosseini set a $1,750 price target on 29 May, citing DRAM pricing that has come in stronger than expected. Mizuho raised its target from $800 to $1,150, projecting a sharp jump in revenue and earnings for fiscal 2027, with HBM as the primary driver. TipRanks’ AI model tags the stock as “Outperform” with a $1,117 target. Mizuho also sees HBM prices climbing another 70% to 100% next year, driven by constrained supply and surging investment in AI infrastructure. Market researcher TrendForce has boosted its 2026 capex forecast for the nine largest cloud providers by 79% — a tailwind that feeds directly into Micron’s order book.
The financial results back up the narrative. In the second fiscal quarter, revenue surged 196% year-on-year to $23.9 billion. Management expects around $33.5 billion in the third quarter, with official results due on 24 June. Despite the euphoria, some investors debate whether Micron’s massive capex programme risks creating an oversupply further down the line. For now, the demand for high-performance memory appears largely price-inelastic and growing faster than any factory can be brought online. The real test will come in 2027 and 2028, when new capacity finally starts to flow — and the market must decide whether a structural deficit can persist without breaking the cycle that made Micron a trillion-dollar company.
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