Micron Technology invests $200 billions to build a factory to overcome AI memory bottlenecks

Gelonghui, February 17｜Micron Technology is the largest memory chip manufacturer in the United States. These tiny silicon chips are used to store and transmit data, powering a wide range of devices from smartphones and automotive computers to laptops and data centers. Micron Technology is ramping up capacity to address the most severe supply crunch the memory industry has seen in over 40 years. In Boise, where the company is headquartered, Micron is investing $50 billion to more than double its 450-acre campus, including the construction of two new chip factories (wafer fabs). The first batch of silicon wafers from the initial fab is expected to roll out by mid-2027, for the production of DRAM—a type of memory used to make high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are increasingly vital for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) computing. Both factories are expected to be operational by the end of 2028. And that's not all. Near Syracuse, Micron has just broken ground on a $100 billion wafer fab complex, the largest private investment in New York State's history. At the end of last year, Micron announced a $9.6 billion investment in a wafer fab in Hiroshima, Japan, while its competitor SK Hynix announced in January that it would build a $13 billion wafer fab in South Korea; in addition, the company is constructing a $4 billion manufacturing complex in Indiana. Behind this frenzied manufacturing arms race is the AI boom. "I've worked here for 28 years and have never seen anything as disruptive as AI," said Scott Gatzemeier, vice president in charge of Micron's $200 billion U.S. expansion plan. "As we shift from training to inference, the amount of data required surges, and we simply don't have enough cleanroom capacity to meet demand. We realized we had a huge problem." Since April last year, Micron's stock price has risen more than fivefold to about $414, bringing the company's market capitalization close to $500 billion.