New York, February 19, 2026, 13:42 EST — Regular session
- Lam Research dropped roughly 3% in afternoon trading, sliding alongside other chip equipment names.
- This week, the company set up a new Boise office to work more directly with Micron on memory manufacturing.
- Lam’s early-March conference slots have investors looking for any new signs on demand.
Lam Research dropped 2.8% to $233.40 Thursday, retreating after a run-up in the previous session as chip-equipment names lost ground. Shares moved between $231.58 and $241.60. Applied Materials, ASML, and KLA also finished lower.
Investors are rethinking high-multiple names in tech and semis after the group’s big gains, prompting a pullback. Broader U.S. equity benchmarks slipped Thursday, with technology shares lagging following the Fed’s latest meeting minutes and some unsettled trading around both earnings and valuations. 1
Lam, one of the key suppliers of wafer fabrication gear—the equipment behind chip production on silicon wafers—has been doubling down on support for its U.S. clients as memory manufacturers ramp up for AI-fueled growth. On Tuesday, the company said it’s opened a new office in Boise, Idaho, to back Micron’s advanced memory projects. Lam described the location as “critical infrastructure near one of our largest customers.” Micron’s John Whitman weighed in too, highlighting Lam’s tools for their “extraordinary precision at the atomic scale.” 2
Micron has been touting the Boise area as its future anchor for U.S. memory manufacturing, and it’s a big swing. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is backing a $200 billion U.S. buildout, planning two new Boise fabs. They’re eyeing 2027 to kick off high-bandwidth memory output for AI hardware. 3
The stock climbed 1.9% to finish Wednesday at $240.09, marking a third consecutive advance, but it’s still trading under the 52-week peak of $251.87 from Jan. 30, according to MarketWatch data. About 10 million shares changed hands that day, trailing the 50-day average, MarketWatch reported. 4
Traders see the Boise development as a tailwind, though it doesn’t deliver an immediate jolt. Lam, more often than not, trades on sentiment around wafer-fab spend. The real driver remains whether AI demand keeps dragging both memory and logic investment into the present.
But there’s a catch: any pullback in memory capex, a slowdown in AI infrastructure outlays, or a tougher hit from geopolitics and export restrictions can flip tool orders fast—and the stock can re-rate just as quickly.
Next up, Lam CFO Doug Bettinger is set to speak at Morgan Stanley’s TMT conference March 3, followed by Cantor’s Global Technology & Industrial Growth event on March 11. Investors will be watching both appearances for more clues. 5
