U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology said on Wednesday it would exit its memory business for end consumers and instead increase investment in high-end memory chips needed for artificial intelligence data centers. The move comes amid tight global memory chip supply. After the news was announced, Micron's stock price fell about 2.6% intraday.
Micron said it will stop selling consumer memory and solid-state drives under the "Crucial" brand through retailers, e-commerce platforms and distributors, but it will still be available during the transition period until February 2026. Analysts at analyst firm Summit Insights said the consumer memory unit is not a key profit source for Micron's overall business.
Currently, many types of chips, from flash memory used in smartphones to high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence data centers, are facing tight global supply chains, and the market demand for high-performance storage is rising sharply. Against this background, Micron is accelerating its tilt towards high value-added products such as HBM, and is fiercely competing with South Korea's two major competitors, SK Hynix and Samsung, in the high-end storage market.
Micron Chief Commercial Officer Sadana said that driven by AI applications in data centers, demand for memory and storage has surged, and the company has made a "difficult decision" to withdraw from the Crucial consumer business in order to prioritize its limited production capacity and resources to ensure the needs of strategic customers with faster growth and larger scale. As a type of stacked dynamic random access memory, HBM is vertically packaged with multi-layer chips to reduce power consumption while improving data throughput. Therefore, its value becomes increasingly prominent in AI applications such as training and running large models. Its price and profit margin are usually significantly higher than traditional consumer-grade memory products.
Micron CEO Mehrotra previously stated in September that the company's HBM-related revenue has grown to nearly US$2 billion in the quarter ending in August. If calculated on an annualized basis, the corresponding revenue scale is close to US$8 billion, indicating that this business is becoming an important growth engine for Micron. Driven by the global AI computing power competition, the industry generally expects that high-end memory chips will maintain strong demand. Micron's strategic adjustment is seen as a typical move to adapt to the upgrading of the industrial structure, shrink low-yield businesses, and focus on high-growth sectors.