The memory chip crisis is bearing fruit for this American company

The AI ​​boom has fueled dozens of new startups and created a new class of billionaires. It has also produced a serious shortage of memory chips — a critical component for compute-hungry AI models — that some predict could last until 2027.

This era of RAMageddon is not just an institutional problem. As demand rises and supply shrinks, prices rise and are passed on to consumers. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned just a week ago that price increases for its products were inevitable.

But amid this Mad Max-like battle for memory chips, some companies are stepping up. Micron, the largest American manufacturer of computer memory chips – with a market value of $1.2 trillion – is one of these companies. This was not always the case. The company’s shares traded at about $83 in early 2024 (with a market cap of about $91 billion) and closed today at $1,048.51.

The company reported third-quarter earnings after markets closed on Wednesday, and the results sent shares up more than 13%. Revenues quadrupled to $41.45 billion compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, the company’s profits rose from $1.88 billion to $28.2 billion year over year.

The Idaho-based company also gave investors a positive outlook, forecasting fourth-quarter revenue to range between $49 billion and $51 billion.

The strong results arrived in the same week that Micron signed a deal to supply memory and storage chips to the Anthropic AI lab. Micron also revealed its participation in Anthropic’s Series H funding round, although it did not disclose the amount it invested.