AI data centers are swallowing the world's memory and storage supply, setting the stage for a pricing apocalypse that could last a decade
Framework stops selling standalone laptop RAM to ward off scalpers — warns price increase is coming
Micron’s December 3 announcement described a consumer exit shaped by AI demand rather than short-term performance in the retail channel. The company said it would retire Crucial as a consumer-facing business and concentrate investment on HBM memory lines feeding enterprise customers. The shift is intended to support advanced data-center products during a period of constrained supply and rising AI requirements.
HBM’s engineering is nothing like the consumer memory Micron is stepping away from. The technology stacks multiple dies into a single package and links them through dense vertical interconnects, producing far higher bandwidth per watt than conventional DDR and turning memory into a performance enabler rather than a bottleneck.
That is important at a time when hyperscalers are racing to stand up ever-larger AI clusters and where each new generation of GPUs pushes memory throughput harder than capacity. For Micron, the growth prospects and margins attached to HBM outstrip anything available in the price-sensitive retail channel , and the company’s decision places its wafer supply squarely behind the memory technologies that now define competitiveness in AI infrastructure.
In the meantime, consumer inventory remains, and resellers need to continue to promote it to shift inventory. The Delhi Comic Con booth is simply a reflection of that fact; a snapshot of a brand still active in public even as its parent company prepares to abandon consumers and concentrate on more lucrative memory technologies .
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Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/micron-branded-booth-appears-at-delhi-comic-con-days-after-company-confirms-crucial-shutdown#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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