The most boring-sounding corner of the chip world just became its most exciting, and Micron is the reason to pay attention. On 4 August, research firm Counterpoint published its Q2 2026 numbers for the DRAM market, and Micron’s stock ripped almost 6 per cent on a single word: share.
DRAM is the working memory inside every server, phone and laptop, the fast, temporary storage a processor reaches for while it thinks. HBM (high-bandwidth memory) is the premium, stacked version that sits next to AI accelerators and has become the single most supply-constrained ingredient in the entire AI build-out. Demand has gone vertical.
The league table nobody expected
The standings for the quarter: Samsung back on top with about 39 per cent, SK Hynix second on 26 per cent, and Micron third on 25 per cent, having climbed from 22 per cent. One percentage point now separates Micron from second place. Counterpoint’s Neil Shah reckons Micron has a realistic shot at overtaking SK Hynix outright.
The scale of the boom is hard to overstate. Counterpoint has quarterly DRAM sales up roughly fivefold from a year ago. SK Hynix’s revenue rose 214 per cent year on year and its share still slipped, because everyone is growing and Micron and Samsung grew faster. Micron’s own DRAM revenue is up close to fourfold since the second quarter of 2025. DRAM is the company’s profit engine, close to 80 per cent of its revenue.
Here is the part that should make buyers nervous and sellers giddy. The three big memory makers have reportedly sold out their entire 2027 DRAM and HBM output already, months ahead of schedule. When suppliers have pre-sold next year’s production, they hold the pricing power, which is lovely if you own the shares and painful if you are a company that needs to buy memory to build anything.
Micron stock is up around 207 per cent this year. That is not a typo, and it is exactly why some analysts are now waving caution flags about a pullback. A stock that has tripled is priced for the good news to keep coming.
Two clouds on the horizon
First, memory is famously cyclical: today’s shortage becomes tomorrow’s glut once capacity catches up, and the whole sector has been burned by that pattern before. Second, China. Chinese maker CXMT has gone from under 1 per cent of DRAM to roughly 7 per cent, the fastest-growing supplier in the world, and its slice of HBM supply is forecast to climb sharply by 2028. Cheap domestic competition is exactly how memory booms have ended in the past.
For now, though, the AI machine needs more memory than the planet can make, and Micron is closing on the number-two spot in the industry at the perfect moment. The useful read: watch the 2027 capacity bookings and CXMT’s share, because those two lines will tell you when the party slows long before the share price does.
Did you know: memory chips were so unloved in early 2023 that Micron posted billions of dollars in losses. The same product line is now reportedly sold out through the end of 2027.
Note: this is market commentary, not investment advice. Memory stocks are volatile. Do your own homework.
Related on Top Tool Stack: SK Hynix’s record quarter · China’s CXMT chip IPO