MW Micron's stock is surging as the company looks to cash in on a 'desperate' market

By Britney Nguyen

The memory-chip company is adding a new facility that will boost capacity, but not before setting the stage for two years of big price increases

Micron's stock was up more than 5% on Tuesday morning.

Micron Technology has plans for a new manufacturing facility that will help address memory shortages, but not right away - and that's hitting a sweet spot for investors.

The memory-chip maker said on Monday evening that it is building a new advanced wafer fabrication facility in its complex in Singapore for NAND manufacturing.

"Clearly, the NAND market is desperate for more supply," Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy said in a Tuesday note.

Micron's stock was up more than 5% in morning trading Tuesday.

See also: Here's how Sandisk's stock can follow its 1,000% surge with even more gains

NAND has become essential for inference, or the process of running artificial-intelligence models, in data centers. The flash memory is nonvolatile, meaning it can be used to store data without power, and is found in devices such as flash drives and smartphones.

But memory providers have been reluctant to add more capacity out of fear of oversupplying a typically cyclical market. Right now, the companies have been able to boost prices because demand is so high relative to supply. The concern is that rushing to boost capacity would cut into that pricing power and potentially result in a glut if demand conditions flip.

While demand for NAND is expected to grow more than 20% in 2026, no new capacity will be added this year or in 2027, giving memory makers more room to lift prices over that duration, Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh said in a Monday note.

He estimated that annualized pricing for NAND will be up 330% this year and will rise another 50% in 2027, pointing to shortages caused by demand for AI servers in data centers. Nvidia's new storage architecture for its Rubin platform, meant to improve efficiency and inference, is another potential driver of NAND demand, he added.

Rakesh raised his price target for Micron's stock to $480, representing upside of 23% from Monday's closing price of $389.09.

See more: Micron's business is so hot that profits could quadruple in just two years, says this analyst

Micron's two-story facility will eventually provide 700,000 square feet of clean-room capacity for chip manufacturing, according to the company, which plans to invest $24 billion over the course of a decade. Production of new NAND wafers is expected to start in the latter half of 2028, Micron said.

The stocks of other NAND producers, including Sandisk $(SNDK)$, Japan's Kioxia (JP:285A), and South Korea's Samsung Electronics (KR:005930) and SK Hynix (KR:000660), also were rising on Tuesday after Micron's announcement.

Mizuho trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein said in a Tuesday note that, in more than two decades of covering memory stocks, he has never seen a "buying frenzy" related to an announcement of new capacity. He added that other NAND makers could now follow Micron in adding capacity.

"If they do not and watch peers add new supply, they run risk of not only losing [market] share but seeing pricing decline as well from added supply," Klein said.

Don't miss: Why Micron's stock is a standout gainer as the market falters

-Britney Nguyen

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January 27, 2026 11:55 ET (16:55 GMT)

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