Micron's Quarterly Revenue Nearly Quadruples as AI Memory Shortage Deepens

Micron Technology reported record fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year results late Tuesday, with revenue nearly quadrupling from a year earlier as an industry-wide shortage of memory chips driven by artificial-intelligence computing continued to push prices and profits sharply higher. The Boise, Idaho-based chipmaker also issued a forecast for the current quarter that came in well above Wall Street's expectations, a signal that the memory supercycle fueling its results shows little sign of easing.

The company's fiscal fourth-quarter report, which covers the three months ended September 3, 2026, showed revenue of $54.23 billion, up from $11.32 billion in the same period a year earlier and from $41.46 billion in the prior quarter. For the full fiscal year, revenue totaled $133.2 billion, more than triple the $37.4 billion Micron reported in fiscal 2025. The figures were disclosed in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Micron's non-GAAP earnings came to $33.42 per diluted share for the quarter, ahead of the roughly $31.70 analysts had penciled in, while GAAP diluted earnings were $32.87 per share. Gross margin for the quarter reached 87.0 percent on a non-GAAP basis, up more than two percentage points from the prior quarter. For the full year, non-GAAP earnings per share were $75.52, roughly ninefold higher than a year earlier — a gain the company has attributed almost entirely to surging prices and volumes for DRAM and NAND flash memory used in artificial-intelligence servers.

Inside the results, the divisions tied most directly to AI infrastructure stood out. Micron's cloud memory business generated $16.28 billion in quarterly revenue at an 83 percent gross margin, while its core data-center unit brought in $18.0 billion at a 90 percent margin. Revenue from data-center solid-state drives approached $10 billion for the quarter, roughly ten times the year-earlier level. For the current quarter, Micron guided to revenue of $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, well above the roughly $57 billion analysts had expected, with non-GAAP earnings guided to $38.15 per share.

How the shortage took hold

Micron's results are the latest and starkest evidence of a memory-chip shortage that has built over roughly two years as cloud-computing companies race to build out data centers for AI training and inference. Unlike logic chips, which are customized for specific processors, memory is a commodity product used across nearly every category of electronics, from smartphones to cars to AI servers — which means a supply crunch driven by one segment of demand ripples quickly into every other.

Micron has said that a large share of its upcoming capacity is already spoken for: the company told investors on its earnings call that roughly three-quarters of its fiscal 2027 output has been committed under long-term supply agreements, and that it now has 26 strategic customer agreements covering about 35 percent of revenue through 2030, according to a transcript of the call with analysts. Chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that "as strong as fiscal 2026 was, we expect fiscal 2027 to be even better," and that high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators is seeing pricing and demand running ahead of the company's own expectations. Micron also holds an investor webcast after each quarterly report in which it lays out supply commitments in more detail.

Who is affected

The shortage that is lifting Micron's results is simultaneously squeezing the companies and consumers that buy memory chips. Research firm Gartner has forecast that worldwide PC shipments will fall roughly 10 percent in 2026 and smartphone shipments about 8 percent, as DRAM and solid-state storage costs climb sharply and manufacturers pass the increases on to buyers or shrink production of lower-margin models. Gartner has projected that combined DRAM and SSD prices could rise by as much as 130 percent over the course of the year, according to an analysis of the firm's forecasts, a trend the firm's research director, Ranjit Atwal, said is pushing cheaper computers out of the market entirely.

"Because the price of memory is increasing so much, vendors lose the ability to provide entry-level PCs — those below about $500," Atwal said.

The effects extend well beyond PC and phone makers. Cloud-computing providers and AI-server builders that rely on high-bandwidth memory for accelerator chips are competing for allocation with consumer-electronics manufacturers, and Micron executives have said pricing for that category is rising faster than the company average. Enterprise buyers of laptops and data-storage equipment are also facing longer replacement cycles and higher procurement costs as the shortage persists, while Micron's own suppliers and manufacturing partners in Idaho, Virginia, and Singapore stand to benefit from the company's expanding production commitments.

Market reaction

Micron shares, which have risen more than 500 percent over the past year, extended their gains in the hours after the report, trading above $1,080 and approaching a widely watched technical level near $1,100 that traders see as a gateway toward the stock's prior all-time high, according to trading desk commentary on the results. Investors have treated Micron as one of the clearest proxies for the broader AI infrastructure buildout, given that its product — unlike the specialized processors made by chip designers — is a direct input into virtually every server, phone, and laptop sold.

Some analysts flagged the quarter's gross-margin guidance of roughly 86 percent for the current period, slightly below the 87 percent some had expected, as a modest caveat, even as the revenue outlook beat forecasts by a wide margin. Executives attributed the gap partly to higher operating expenses tied to capacity expansion and research spending rather than to any softening in demand or pricing.

What happens next

Micron's own guidance points to continued growth through at least the first half of fiscal 2027, with management telling investors it expects supply to remain tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it was this year, even as the company adds manufacturing capacity in the United States and abroad. That outlook will be tested against how quickly rivals including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix can bring additional capacity online, and against whether AI-related capital spending by cloud providers continues at its current pace.

For buyers of consumer electronics, the near-term outlook is for prices to keep climbing rather than ease. Gartner's forecasts suggest the squeeze on affordable devices will continue through the rest of 2026, with the firm projecting that average PC lifespans will lengthen as replacement costs rise. Whether that dynamic eventually curbs AI-related memory demand, or simply reallocates a larger share of global chip output away from consumer products and toward data centers, is likely to remain one of the more closely watched questions in the technology sector heading into next year.