Should You Skip Micron for This AI Chip Stock Instead?

Micron Technology has been 1 of the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. Shares of this representation subordinate person soared by much than 810% successful the past year. The company's gross was up 196% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $23.9 billion, portion gross borderline surged 18 percent points sequentially to a grounds 75% successful the 2nd 4th of fiscal 2026 (ending Feb. 26, 2026).

Micron's high-bandwidth representation (HBM) chips are becoming progressively important for Nvidia's Blackwell and Rubin AI platforms. The institution precocious announced measurement shipments of HBM4 for Nvidia's Rubin systems. Micron besides expects some DRAM and NAND proviso conditions to stay choky beyond 2026.

However, different semiconductor institution whitethorn beryllium benefiting from a antithetic portion of the AI infrastructure build-out. That institution is Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK), which focuses connected retention infrastructure.

AI request is creating a immense retention accidental

Growing adoption of AI systems is expanding the magnitude of information processed by AI models, including larger prompts, longer conversations, much analyzable reasoning, and progressively autonomous AI agents. AI systems besides necessitate ample amounts of low-latency flash retention to rapidly retrieve accusation and make real-time responses astatine scale. This, successful turn, is expanding the magnitude of information that indispensable beryllium stored and processed, driving request for retention infrastructure.

NAND flash is becoming a captious portion of AI infrastructure due to the fact that it provides the retention capableness and ratio needed to tally AI systems astatine scale. Sandisk is progressively benefiting from rising request for endeavor solid-state drives (SSDs) and NAND flash retention utilized successful AI inference systems (running AI models successful accumulation environments), vector databases (AI-driven real-time information retrieval systems), and agentic AI workloads. Management expects AI-powered request to reshape NAND request and marque the retention concern little cyclical implicit time.

Sandisk's caller net results person demonstrated the accelerated gait of this demand. The company's revenues soared 251% year-over-year to $5.9 billion, portion non-GAAP net per stock (EPS) jumped astir 277% sequentially to $23.4 successful the 3rd 4th of fiscal 2026 (ending April 3, 2026). The information halfway concern has go a cardinal maturation catalyst, with revenues rising 233% sequentially to $1.47 cardinal successful the 3rd quarter.