Micron Technology reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $41.46 billion, a more than fourfold increase from $9.3 billion in the same period last year. The result crushed Wall Street’s consensus of roughly $35 billion by over $6 billion.
DRAM contributed $31.3 billion, while NAND flash memory accounted for $9.9 billion. Adjusted earnings per share reached $25.11, well above the $20.39 analysts expected. Adjusted gross margins hit approximately 85%, underscoring extreme pricing power in the AI-driven memory market.
CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said the results "reflect the strategic value of memory in the AI era."
Alongside the earnings, Micron announced a strategic supply agreement with Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude. The deal highlights how memory makers are forging direct relationships with frontier AI companies, bypassing traditional cloud intermediaries.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, Micron guided revenue between $49 billion and $51 billion, a sequential leap of around 20% at the midpoint.
The surge is exclusively fueled by AI demand from companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta. In a notable departure from past cycles, crypto played no role; Micron made no mention of cryptocurrency, blockchain, or mining in its results. Previous hardware booms saw memory demand partly driven by crypto mining, but now the semiconductor supply chain is entirely oriented toward AI workloads. Should crypto infrastructure needs rise again, they may face fierce competition for capacity against deep-pocketed AI labs with long-term supply deals.