Micron Technology is making one of the boldest industrial bets in modern American history. The country’s largest memory chip maker plans to invest $200 billion to expand domestic production of silicon chips that quietly power AI systems, smartphones, laptops, cars and vast data centers.
The company is working hard to head off what executives say is the worst supply crunch the memory industry has faced in more than 40 years. In particular, demand is accelerating faster than most expected.
The center of this push is Micron’s headquarters in Boise, Idaho. There, it’s spending $50 billion to more than double the size of its 450-acre campus. Two large manufacturing plants are under construction. The first, known as ID1, is expected to produce its first silicon wafers in mid-2027, producing DRAM for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips essential for advanced AI computing. Both plants are scheduled to be operational by the end of 2028.
Each facility will be 600,000 square feet, making it the largest cleanroom ever built in the United States. Over 7 million pounds of dynamite had to be detonated just to prepare the ground. Construction workers have built a kind of temporary city to continue work around the clock.
Their scale is staggering: each plant produces 70,000 tons of steel, roughly equivalent to the amount used in the Golden Gate Bridge, and 300,000 cubic yards of concrete, equivalent to four Empire State Buildings.
AI boom ignites manufacturing arms race
This craze will be fueled by artificial intelligence. Memory demand is outstripping supply as companies like OpenAI, Oracle, xAI, and Anthropic announce ambitious data center plans. Advanced processors from Nvidia, Google, Broadcom, and Advanced Micro Devices require faster speeds and more memory than ever before for both model training and inference.
As a result, a gold rush occurred. Since last April, Micron’s stock price has increased more than sixfold, valuing the company at nearly $5 trillion. Gross profit margins rose from 18.5% at the start of 2024 to 56% in the latest quarter, and are expected to rise to 68% going forward, a level once unimaginable for a company that has long been treated as a commodity supplier.
From daily necessities to critical infrastructure
Memory chips have historically been vulnerable to violent boom-bust cycles. When pandemic-era demand for PCs and smartphones collapsed in 2022, inventories piled up and valuations fell. Manufacturers reduced production to stabilize prices.
Then AI changed everything. Taiwan’s Commercial Times reported that DRAM contract prices have soared more than 170% in one year. Circular Technology, a Massachusetts-based reseller, shows prices for DDR5 chips have increased nearly 500% since September.
Micron is currently only able to meet half to two-thirds of the demand from some of its largest customers. Buyers are now seeking multi-year contracts to secure supply and avoid price shocks. Beyond Idaho, Micron recently broke ground on a $100 billion fab complex near Syracuse, the largest private investment in New York history. Hiroshima also announced a $9.6 billion expansion. Meanwhile, rival SK Hynix is building a $13 billion factory in South Korea and a $4 billion complex in Indiana.
Competitive pressure in a high-stakes market
Despite the surge in demand, competition remains fierce. In February, it was reported that Micron’s HBM4 chip had failed to secure a role supplying Nvidia’s next Vera Rubin AI server. The company denied these claims, saying it was already shipping HBM4 and that supplies of HBM4 and HBM3e were sold out by the end of the year.
For an industry once defined by volatility, memory has become central to the AI economy. Micron’s $200 billion bet shows that the race to power the world’s data is just beginning.
“I’ve been here 28 years and I’ve never seen anything as disruptive as AI,” said Scott Gatzemeyer, vice president leading Micron’s $200 billion U.S. expansion. “Once we started moving from training to inference, the amount of data we needed exploded, and we didn’t have enough cleanroom capacity to meet the demand. We realized we had a big problem.”
“Our business is on an extraordinary trajectory,” Micron Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said at an investor conference Wednesday. “On the supply side, we are doing everything we can to increase production capacity,” he said. “But there’s no easy or quick way to accomplish that.”
“The supply shortage is far from over,” said Brad Gastwirth, Circular’s global head of research. “I think this situation will continue until the end of 2026, or at least the first half of 2027.”
“Memory has gone from being a system component to being a strategic asset,” said Sumit Sadhana, the company’s chief business officer. “The full potential of AI lies ahead of us.”
