Micron’s memory stock market cap rises to surpass $700 billion

micron’s The historic rally continued Tuesday, with the memory maker’s stock soaring 11% and the company’s market capitalization topping $700 billion for the first time.

The stock has risen 124% this year and nearly 700% in the past 12 months, propelling Micron into the top 10 most valuable U.S. tech companies.

The artificial intelligence boom is causing demand for memory to skyrocket, leading to a global shortage. Chip maker preferences Nvidia and advanced micro device Powering high-performance AI processors requires large amounts of memory. micron, SK Hynix and samsung It accounts for almost the entire memory market.

sandiska maker of solid-state drives that rely on so-called NAND memory, also soared on Tuesday, soaring 12%. The stock price has increased about six times this year.

Micron announced Tuesday that it has begun shipping its largest commercially available solid-state drive. Compared to traditional hard disk drives, SSDs allow you to store more memory with less power demand.

“This breakthrough capacity gives data center operators a significant new means to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a critical constraint on the scale of AI infrastructure,” Jeremy Warner, senior vice president of Micron’s core data center division, said in a press release.

Memory manufacturers have been unable to meet demand during the AI ​​craze that began in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. After Micron’s second-quarter earnings report in March, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC that major customers were only getting “50% to two-thirds of what they requested” due to supply shortages.

Spotlight: Nvidia ramps up capacity in key parts of AI chip manufacturing

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect that Micron’s CEO is Sanjay Mehrotra. A previous version misspelled his name.