Micron Technology has revised its forecast, now projecting the global memory chip shortage will last well beyond 2027. The company's latest earnings reveal that demand for high-bandwidth memory and DRAM for AI data centers is growing faster than the industry can build new supply.
Previously, Micron and its competitors, Samsung and SK Hynix, expected supply to begin loosening around early 2027. That timeline is now obsolete due to an acceleration in AI workloads.
New fabrication capacity, including Micron's upcoming Idaho facility, is not expected to reach significant production until 2028 because of lengthy qualification periods. The company's stock rose on the news, supported by its pricing power and approximately $100 billion in long-term contracts.
A key risk to this outlook is innovation by major AI customers. If buyers develop more memory-efficient model architectures, novel compression techniques, or custom silicon that tightly integrates memory, demand growth could slow. This could potentially create a market surplus when new capacity finally comes online in 2028.