New York, Feb 20, 2026, 10:02 EST — Regular session
- Micron shares climbed roughly 3% during the early part of the regular session.
- Focus among investors stuck on both tight supply and the steep pricing seen in high-end AI memory.
- Micron’s next major test comes with its earnings report set for March.
Micron Technology Inc shares climbed 2.7% to $428.49 during Friday morning’s session, hitting an intraday high of $430.46. The stock started out at $415.35 and shifted between $413.16 and $430.46.
Some U.S. investors are moving away from the leading AI “hyperscaler” stocks, turning instead to companies positioned to gain from rising AI capital expenditures—think chipmakers and data-storage providers. “Our goal is that every time someone like Meta or Amazon invests in a data center, the cash registers ring across our portfolio,” VistaShares CEO Adam Patti told Reuters. Reuters
Needham’s N. Quinn Bolton bumped his price target on Micron to $450 from $380, sticking with a buy, TipRanks reported, pointing to a memory market that’s still “continuing to tighten and pricing moving meaningfully higher.” According to TipRanks, Micron CFO Mark Murphy, speaking at an investor event, said pricing has gotten better since the last earnings call. Demand hasn’t let up, either—Murphy noted supply still lags, and for high-bandwidth memory, 2026 capacity is already “fully allocated.” TipRanks
Investors also kept an eye on high-bandwidth memory, or HBM—those stacked chips that speed data to AI processors. According to a South Korean newspaper cited by Barron’s, Samsung Electronics is looking to price its upcoming HBM4 chips 20% to 30% above the last version. That points to persistent tightness at the top end of the memory market.
Micron stands as the top U.S. maker of memory chips, with DRAM and NAND making up its main offerings. DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, serves as the “working” memory in PCs and servers. NAND flash, on the other hand, shows up in storage across everything from phones to data centers.
The AI expansion remains the main driver behind the upbeat outlook for memory stocks. This week, Reuters Breakingviews highlighted that data-center investment is on track to hit roughly $800 billion by 2026. Memory shares have already been climbing, with investors betting on constrained supply.
Traders tracking Micron are zeroing in on whether DRAM and NAND contract prices keep pushing higher, and they’re on the lookout for details on HBM4 ramp-up and how allocations are shaping up. Also in focus: the next wave of major AI capex plans from top cloud players, a key signal for the chipmaker.
But this trade can reverse quickly. Memory markets run hot and cold—a sudden price surge draws in fresh supply, while an AI spending slowdown would likely hit those fat-margin products right out of the gate. Samsung and SK Hynix aren’t on the sidelines in HBM either, so any hiccup in yields or shipment timing can hit a stock that now moves with every price tick.
Micron’s fiscal Q2 earnings land March 19, and attention will turn to pricing, supply discipline, and HBM traction for the remainder of 2026.
