Has AI ended the memory-chip boom-and-bust cycle?

Micron crossed $1 trillion in market value this week, a milestone few investors would have expected even a few years ago. The memory-chip sector has long been one of tech's cruelest corners, swinging from brutal booms to catastrophic busts. Micron shares have risen roughly twentyfold since 2017; Samsung crossed the $1 trillion threshold earlier this month and SK Hynix joined the party on Tuesday.

Samsung made more than $30 billion in profit during the first quarter alone. The industry's structure has shifted. In the early 1990s there were more than 20 meaningful DRAM makers; today the market is effectively controlled by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Bill Joy argued in 2017 that fewer suppliers and rising demand from cloud computing and AI would reduce the sector's historic tendency toward overproduction.

That argument proved early, not wrong. AI demand is reshaping demand dynamics. Modern AI systems constantly move and process huge amounts of data inside giant data centers and repeatedly run into memory constraints.

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