Micron CEO: AI Permanently Alters the Memory Industry's Cyclical Nature
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated that AI has permanently altered the memory industry's traditional cyclical nature by generating sustained, high-volume demand. To meet this demand, Micron is constructing a massive manufacturing base in Boise, Idaho, featuring two fabs expected to begin production in mid-2027. High-performance memory has become a critical bottleneck for AI development, shifting the industry from a boom-and-bust cycle to long-term growth driven by data centers, autonomous vehicles, and AI-enabled consumer devices. Micron is currently facing severe supply shortages, with data center customers requesting 50% more supply than the company can currently promise to deliver. The new Boise fabs will each span an area equivalent to approximately 10 American football fields.
## BACKGROUND
Historically, the memory chip market has suffered from extreme price volatility due to cycles of oversupply and under-supply. Modern AI workloads face a performance bottleneck known as the "memory wall," where the speed of transferring data between processors and memory limits overall system performance, driving massive demand for advanced technologies like High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).