The World’s Largest Tech Companies: Memory Chips Skyrocket Amid AI Data Center Buildout
The World’s Largest Tech Companies: Memory Chips Skyrocket Amid AI Data Center Buildout
Publish Date: 2026-06-24 06:00:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Micron’s billionaire CEO Sanjay Mehrotra
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
The artificial intelligence boom has kicked off a trillion dollar land grab to build data centers across the country (and beyond) to provide computational power for AI systems. Memory—a core part of data centers— decides how fast servers can process information. That’s good news for memory chip businesses that are experiencing exponential growth selling to the world’s largest tech companies like Nvidia, Apple and Amazon.
Among the biggest beneficiaries of the AI frenzy is memory behemoth Micron, which builds high-speed chips that sit right next to the GPU and feed data to AI models. Micron’s revenue has exploded, growing 196% year over year to about $24 billion in the second quarter of 2026. It made about $37 billion in revenue in 2025, a roughly 50% increase from 2024. The company’s stock has been on a tear, climbing 270% this year and a staggering 860% over the past 12 months. That growth has helped it move up 140 spots on the Forbes’ Global 2000 list, which ranks the world’s largest public companies.
In May, Micron’s market cap surpassed $1 trillion, making CEO Sanjay Mehrotra a billionaire worth an estimated $1.2 billion, Forbes reported. Its market cap was about $100 billion a little over a year ago. Today, the Boise, Idaho-based company’s top customer is Nvidia (No. 27), accounting for 16% of its revenue, followed by tech giants like Apple (No.11), where its chips are used in iPhones, Macs and iPads, Dell (No. 129) & HP (No. 522) as well as hyperscalers like Amazon (No.2), Microsoft (No.7) and Google (No. 4).
Historically, memory companies are prone to volatile boom and bust cycles. Demand for memory jumps, prices rise during a supply crunch, multiple players start manufacturing to meet demand all at once and by the time the chips hit the market, demand cools and prices fall. AI appears to have broken this cycle altogether, creating a prolonged boom for specialized…
