Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called memory a strategic resource of the artificial intelligence era. In his words, this has fundamentally changed the economics of an industry that has always evolved in cycles.
Mehrotra spoke at the construction site of a semiconductor plant near the company's headquarters in Boise, Idaho. Micron is building two new facilities under a plan that calls for $250 billion in investments in U.S. manufacturing and research.
Why Mehrotra calls memory infrastructure
Memory production has always been cyclical: high demand triggers the construction of new capacity, and the resulting surplus again drives prices down.
Mehrotra believes artificial intelligence has given the industry more sustainable demand. In his assessment, customers are also changing their approach to procurement — choosing a supplier solely by price, as if it were a regular commodity, is no longer viable.
Chips are now tailored to specific processors and systems. The performance of an entire server increasingly depends on this pairing.
"That's why I call memory strategic infrastructure of the AI era," he said. "Today, it's impossible to imagine AI without memory. AI-based systems require more and more memory," he stated.
What the numbers show
Micron's financial reports back up his words with figures: revenue for the third fiscal quarter rose to $41.46 billion from $9.30 billion in the same period last year.
Gross margin climbed to 84.6% of revenue, compared with 37.7% a year earlier. In the fourth quarter, the company expects to reach approximately 86%.
The bottleneck right now is manufacturing. Mehrotra admitted that plants do not cover customer demand: data centers alone need about 50% more chips than Micron produces.
Demand will grow even further, the company's head is confident. Among future buyers, he named manufacturers of autonomous vehicles, robots, and AI-powered household appliances.
Not everyone shares this view. In June, a lawsuit was filed against Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix: the plaintiffs accused the manufacturers of collusion and inflating DRAM memory prices.
Chinese companies like CXMT are also expanding output, which could bring back the fierce price-driven competition for customers — the very competition that, according to Mehrotra, the industry left behind thanks to artificial intelligence.
My analysis: Mehrotra's statements are not just manufacturer optimism, but a marker of a shift in the market paradigm. If memory was once a volatile commodity market, it is now becoming a strategic asset comparable in importance to lithography equipment. However, the risks of overproduction and regulatory lawsuits have not gone away — investors should closely watch the supply-demand balance in the coming quarters.