Micron Technology closed its fiscal 2026 year with the biggest quarter in company history, and the numbers explain why RAM and SSD prices have been climbing all year. The Boise, Idaho chipmaker reported $54.23 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenue on September 30, 2026, up from $41.46 billion the prior quarter and more than 4.7 times the $11.32 billion it posted a year earlier. The AI data-center buildout that has reshaped the hardware market over the past two years is now doing the same thing to memory chips, and Micron’s results are the clearest evidence yet of how far that squeeze has gone.
For anyone shopping for a new laptop, gaming PC, or phone in late 2026, this report matters. DRAM and NAND flash are the two commodity components that sit inside nearly every consumer device, and when the companies that make them report record pricing power, that cost eventually lands on store shelves. Micron’s own fiscal-year trend lines up with warnings from across the industry that memory now makes up a bigger share of device bills of materials than it has in years.
Micron’s Fiscal Q4 2026 Numbers, by the Dollar
Micron’s fiscal fourth quarter covers the three months through late August 2026, and the company released results on September 30, detailed in its official newsroom press release. Total revenue of $54.23 billion grew 379% year over year and beat the roughly $51.07 billion analysts had expected, based on estimates compiled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings came in at $33.42 per share for the quarter. For the full fiscal year, Micron’s revenue reached approximately $133.19 billion, up 256% from fiscal 2025.
The growth was not evenly split between Micron’s two main product lines. DRAM, the short-term memory used in PCs, phones, servers, and graphics cards, generated $39.8 billion in the quarter, about 73% of total revenue. That is up 27% sequentially and 343% from a year earlier. NAND flash, the storage memory used in SSDs, brought in $14.1 billion, roughly 26% of revenue, up 42% sequentially and 526% year over year.
| Metric | Fiscal Q4 2026 | Fiscal Q4 2025 | Year-over-Year Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $54.23 billion | $11.32 billion | +379% |
| DRAM revenue | $39.8 billion | Not broken out separately | +343% |
| NAND revenue | $14.1 billion | Not broken out separately | +526% |
| Data-center SSD revenue | ~$10 billion | ~1/10th of current level | >10x |
| Adjusted EPS | $33.42 | Not disclosed in available results | N/A |
| Full fiscal-year revenue | $133.19 billion | ~$37.4 billion (implied) | +256% |
Data-center SSDs deserve their own line item. Micron’s data-center SSD revenue came in just under $10 billion for the quarter, more than ten times what it generated a year earlier, and that single category now accounts for more than two-thirds of all NAND revenue at the company. In other words, the storage drives going into AI server racks, not the SSDs going into gaming PCs, are now the dominant force inside Micron’s flash business.
Why DRAM and NAND Prices Keep Climbing
Micron’s results show price increases running alongside volume increases, which is unusual for a commodity chip business. DRAM average selling prices rose in the high-teens percentage range sequentially during the quarter, even as DRAM bit shipments grew only in the mid-single digits. NAND average selling prices climbed roughly 30% sequentially, while NAND bit shipments rose about 10%. That combination, prices rising faster than shipments, is the clearest sign that demand is outrunning supply rather than Micron simply selling more chips at stable prices.
AI Servers Are Eating the Supply
The driver is not a mystery. AI training and inference clusters need enormous amounts of high-bandwidth and conventional memory, and server builders have been placing orders well ahead of what memory fabs can produce. That dynamic has already shown up in reports of AI accelerators losing a third of their memory capacity to HBM shortages and in chipmakers locking up supply contracts years in advance. Micron’s quarter is the commercial proof of that same story: AI infrastructure customers are willing to pay up, and that pricing power is flowing straight to the bottom line.
A Market That Flipped From Oversupply to Shortage
It is worth remembering how recently the memory market looked completely different. Through 2022 and into 2023, DRAM and NAND makers, including Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, posted billions of dollars in losses as PC and smartphone demand slumped and warehouses filled with unsold chips. Micron itself cut output and delayed expansion plans during that downturn. The swing from that glut to today’s capacity crunch happened inside about three years, and AI data-center demand is the single biggest reason the industry flipped so hard in the other direction.
TrendForce’s Forecast for the Rest of 2026
Micron’s results look backward at the quarter that just closed. Memory market research firm TrendForce has also published a forward estimate for the current calendar quarter, and it points the same direction. The firm expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 10% to 15% quarter over quarter in the fourth calendar quarter of 2026, with NAND flash prices forecast to climb 15% to 20% over the same period. Those are contract prices paid by device makers and module builders, not direct retail prices, but they tend to filter down to finished products within one to two quarters.
| Price or Revenue Metric | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Micron DRAM ASP, sequential | High-teens % increase | Micron fiscal Q4 2026 earnings release |
| Micron DRAM revenue, sequential | +27% | Micron fiscal Q4 2026 earnings release |
| Micron NAND ASP, sequential | ~+30% increase | Micron fiscal Q4 2026 earnings release |
| Micron NAND revenue, sequential | +42% | Micron fiscal Q4 2026 earnings release |
| TrendForce conventional DRAM contract price forecast, calendar Q4 2026 | +10% to +15% QoQ | TrendForce industry forecast |
| TrendForce NAND flash price forecast, calendar Q4 2026 | +15% to +20% QoQ | TrendForce industry forecast |
Micron’s own forward guidance reinforces the TrendForce numbers. The company forecast approximately $61.5 billion in fiscal first-quarter revenue, covering the period through late November 2026, which would mark another sequential increase on top of an already record quarter.
Mehrotra’s Warning: No Relief Until 2028
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra used the earnings call to set expectations well beyond the current quarter. He said memory and storage supply is expected to stay much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it was in 2026, signaling that new fab capacity will not catch up to AI-driven demand for at least two more years. That timeline matches what Intel’s own leadership has said about the memory shortage stretching into 2028, giving buyers two of the industry’s biggest chip executives independently pointing at the same multi-year window.
Building new DRAM and NAND fabs takes years, not quarters, and the capital goes toward the highest-margin products first. That means data-center DRAM and enterprise SSDs are likely to keep getting priority treatment over consumer RAM modules and retail SSDs for the foreseeable future, which is consistent with what buyers have already seen happen with retail memory stockpiles reportedly falling to just days of supply earlier this year.
How Micron Stacks Up Against Samsung and SK Hynix
Micron is the third-largest maker of DRAM in the world behind Samsung and SK Hynix, and the two South Korean giants had not yet published directly comparable fiscal results for the same period at the time of this report. That makes a side-by-side revenue table premature. What can be said with confidence is that Samsung and SK Hynix sell into the exact same AI-driven demand pool that lifted Micron’s numbers, and TrendForce’s contract-price forecasts for calendar Q4 2026 apply across the whole DRAM and NAND market, not just to Micron.
That broader competitive picture matters for the pricing outlook. When all three major suppliers are capacity-constrained at the same time, buyers lose the usual relief valve of switching suppliers to find a better price. Device makers who might normally shop around between Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix modules are instead finding tight allocation and rising prices across the board, which is part of why analysts expect the current pricing cycle to persist rather than get undercut by a competitor flooding the market.
What This Means for PC, Laptop, and Phone Prices
Micron does not sell directly to consumers in most cases. Its chips go to module makers, SSD brands, and device OEMs, who then build them into finished products. That supply chain adds a lag between a wholesale price increase and a retail one, but it does not remove the pressure. Reports earlier this year already pointed to budget phones and laptops losing a large share of their bill of materials to memory costs, and Micron’s fiscal Q4 results show that trend accelerating rather than easing.
Gaming hardware is exposed in a similar way, a trend outlets like Tom’s Hardware have tracked closely all year. Graphics cards, handheld gaming PCs, and prebuilt desktops all carry DRAM and, increasingly, fast NAND storage as standard components. Buyers who have already watched RAM prices climb sharply this year should expect the fourth calendar quarter of 2026 to bring another round of increases, based on both TrendForce’s forecast and Micron’s own guidance for a bigger January quarter.
Entry-Level Products Feel It First
Higher-end devices with large memory configurations can sometimes absorb a cost increase inside a healthy margin. Entry-level laptops, budget phones, and value-tier SSDs have far less room, since memory already represents a larger proportion of their total cost. That is the segment most likely to see either a direct price increase, a reduced base storage or RAM configuration, or both, as device makers try to protect their margins against rising component costs.
The Data-Center SSD Story Hiding Inside the NAND Numbers
The nearly $10 billion in data-center SSD revenue is arguably the single most important number in Micron’s entire report. It shows that AI infrastructure spending has moved beyond just DRAM and HBM, and is now reshaping the NAND flash market the same way. Data-center SSDs now make up more than two-thirds of Micron’s total NAND revenue, which means the storage drives that go into consumer laptops and external drives are competing for fab capacity against a data-center category that is growing more than ten times faster.
This is a meaningful shift from how the NAND market behaved even two years ago, when consumer SSDs and smartphone storage were the primary demand drivers and data-center storage was a smaller, steadier slice of the business. AI training clusters and inference servers need enormous, fast local storage to feed GPUs and accelerators, and that need is now the fastest-growing part of the entire flash memory industry.
Historical Context: Memory Cycles Have Always Been Volatile
Memory chips have a long history of boom-and-bust pricing because fabs take years to build and demand can shift faster than supply can respond. As The Verge and other outlets have chronicled, the 2017-2018 DRAM price spike, the 2021 pandemic-era component shortage, and the 2022-2023 oversupply crash are all recent examples of the same underlying pattern repeating with different causes. What makes the current cycle different is the driver: AI data-center buildouts are a structural, multi-year demand source rather than a temporary spike tied to a single product cycle or a short-term supply disruption, which is part of why Mehrotra and other industry executives are framing the tight-supply window in years rather than quarters.
Comparisons to the broader chip market reinforce that point. Reports earlier in 2026 already showed silicon wafer prices climbing well ahead of AI demand growth, and memory has followed the same trajectory, just with its own supply dynamics layered on top.
Wall Street’s Read on the Quarter
Micron’s revenue beat the roughly $51.07 billion consensus estimate compiled by LSEG, a gap of more than $3 billion above what analysts had modeled heading into the report. That kind of beat, combined with Mehrotra’s multi-year tight-supply framing and the $61.5 billion forward guidance for the fiscal first quarter, gives analysts a reason to keep raising their outlooks for the stock and for the broader memory sector heading into 2027. The size of the beat also suggests that even Wall Street, which has been tracking the AI memory story closely all year, underestimated how fast pricing power was building inside Micron’s order book.
What to Watch Next
A few data points will tell us whether this cycle keeps accelerating or starts to cool. Samsung and SK Hynix’s next earnings reports will show whether Micron’s pricing gains are company-specific or an industry-wide pattern. TrendForce’s actual calendar Q4 2026 pricing data, due out after the quarter closes, will confirm or revise the 10-to-20% increase range the firm has forecast. And Micron’s fiscal first-quarter report, expected around December 2026, will show whether the company actually hits its $61.5 billion guidance or beats it again the way it beat this quarter’s estimate.
Predictions: Where Memory Prices Go From Here
- DRAM and NAND contract prices keep rising through the rest of 2026, tracking TrendForce’s 10-to-20% quarterly forecast, with little sign of a near-term plateau.
- Consumer RAM modules and retail SSDs see further price increases at retail within one to two quarters, as wholesale cost increases work through module makers and OEMs.
- Entry-level laptops and phones are the most likely products to carry smaller base storage or RAM configurations, rather than absorbing the full cost increase into thinner margins.
- Samsung and SK Hynix report similarly strong memory results in their next quarterly updates, reinforcing that this is an industry-wide shortage rather than a Micron-specific story.
- Meaningful supply relief does not arrive before 2028, based on Mehrotra’s own timeline and the multi-year lead times required to bring new DRAM and NAND fab capacity online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Micron’s revenue jump so much in fiscal Q4 2026?
Micron’s $54.23 billion in quarterly revenue, up 379% year over year, was driven by a combination of higher chip shipments and sharply higher prices for both DRAM and NAND flash. AI data-center customers buying memory for training and inference servers are the main source of that demand surge.
Will RAM and SSD prices keep rising for consumers?
TrendForce forecasts conventional DRAM contract prices rising 10% to 15% and NAND flash prices rising 15% to 20% in the current calendar quarter. Those are wholesale prices, but they typically reach retail RAM and SSD products within one to two quarters.
When does Micron expect the memory shortage to ease?
CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said supply is expected to remain much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than in 2026, meaning the company does not expect new fab capacity to resolve the imbalance for at least two more years.
How much of Micron’s business now comes from data centers?
Data-center SSD revenue alone was nearly $10 billion in the quarter, more than ten times the year-earlier level, and now makes up over two-thirds of Micron’s total NAND flash revenue.
Did Micron beat or miss Wall Street’s expectations?
Micron beat expectations. Its $54.23 billion in revenue topped the roughly $51.07 billion consensus estimate compiled by LSEG, and the company guided to approximately $61.5 billion in revenue for the following quarter.
Are Samsung and SK Hynix seeing the same trend as Micron?
Samsung and SK Hynix had not published directly comparable fiscal results for the same period at the time of this report. Both companies compete in the same AI-driven DRAM and NAND market that TrendForce’s price forecasts cover, so analysts widely expect a similar pattern when their results are released.
What is driving NAND flash demand specifically?
Data-center SSDs for AI training and inference clusters are the fastest-growing part of Micron’s NAND business, growing more than tenfold year over year and now outweighing consumer SSD and smartphone storage demand inside the company’s flash revenue.
Is this memory shortage similar to past chip shortages?
It shares surface similarities with the 2021 pandemic-era shortage and the 2017-2018 DRAM spike, but the underlying driver is different. Those earlier cycles were tied to short-term demand spikes or logistics disruptions, while the current shortage is tied to a structural, multi-year AI infrastructure buildout, which is why Micron’s leadership is framing the tight-supply window in years rather than quarters.
