Micron Technology invests $200 billion to build a factory to break through the AI memory bottleneck.

Micron Technology is the largest storage chip manufacturer in the United States. These tiny silicon chips are used for storing and transmitting data, providing power support for various devices including smartphones, car computers, laptops, and data centers. Micron Technology is increasing production capacity to address the most severe supply shortage in the storage industry in over 40 years. In its headquarters in Boise, Micron Technology is investing 50 billion dollars to more than double the size of its 450-acre campus, including constructing two new chip factories. The first wafer fab is expected to begin producing silicon wafers for DRAM by mid-2027, a memory used to manufacture high-bandwidth storage chips, with HBM becoming increasingly important for advanced AI computing. Both factories are expected to be operational by the end of 2028. And that's not all. Near Syracuse, Micron Technology has just broken ground on a 100 billion dollar wafer fab complex, the largest private investment in the history of New York State. At the end of last year, Micron Technology announced a 9.6 billion dollar investment to build a wafer fab in Hiroshima, Japan, while its competitor SK Hynix announced in January that they will be building a 13 billion dollar wafer fab in Korea, in addition to a 4 billion dollar manufacturing complex being built in Indiana. This frenzy of manufacturing competition is driven by the AI boom. "I've been working here for 28 years, and I've never seen anything as disruptive as AI," said Scott DeBoer, Vice President responsible for Micron Technology's 200 billion dollar U.S. expansion plan. "As we transition from training to inference, the amount of data required has skyrocketed, and we simply don't have enough clean room capacity to meet the demand. We realize we're facing a huge problem." Since last April, Micron Technology's stock price has risen more than fivefold, reaching around $414, bringing the company's market value close to $500 billion.