Micron zooms past $700 billion market cap as rally in memory stocks accelerates

Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief executive officer of Micron Technology Inc., during a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Micron Technology Inc. semiconductor manufacturing facility in Clay, New York, US, on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. Heather Ainsworth | Bloomberg | Micron's historic rally continued on Tuesday, with shares of the memory maker surging 12%, lifting the company's market cap past $700 billion for the first time. The stock is now up 125% this year and 700% in the past 12 months, pushing Micron into the top 10 most valuable U.S. tech companies. Demand for memory has surged as the artificial intelligence boom has created insatiable demand that's led to a global shortage. Chipmakers like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices require large amounts of memory to power their high-performance AI processors. Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung make up almost the entire memory market. Stock Chart Icon Stock chart icon Micron one-day stock chart. Sandisk , a maker of solid-state drives that rely on what's known as NAND memory, also spiked on Tuesday, jumping 12%. The stock is up about sixfold this year. Micron announced Tuesday that it's started shipping its largest commercially available solid-state drive . Compared to traditional hard disk drives, SSDs allow more memory to be stored with lower power demands. …