Memory chip stocks rallied after CoreWeave promised to stay out of the bond market

CoreWeave Micron

Micron rose 11.89% to US$811.30 on Wednesday. SanDisk gained about 14%, Seagate just under 10% and South Korea's SK Hynix 9.4%. The VanEck semiconductor fund, which holds all of them, rose 6.3%.

The news that moved them came from a customer. CoreWeave's chief executive, Michael Intrator, said his company will not borrow in the unsecured debt market at current yields. It expects about US$9 billion of customer prepayments over the next three months, and will fund the build-out from those, its contracts and its own cash flow.

The selloff had been about funding all along. Memory makers spent the past month being sold on the fear that the companies buying their chips would run short of money. Orders never fell.

Chart: Micron's yearly sales hit US$133.2bn. Micron's revenue in each financial year to late August or early September, FY2016 to FY2026, in US$bn. FY2025's was US$37.4bn. — This story’s chart of the day: the numbers, the dark version and the animated version are on its own page. The chart’s page →

Micron still closed 35% below the US$1,255 it reached earlier this year. Morgan Stanley's Joseph Moore said the companies building AI infrastructure are still spending to plan, and that chip supply rather than building space is the bottleneck through 2027. Construction delays in Texas and Ohio are the exception he named.

What it hinges on

whether the prepayments arrive. Goldman Sachs' James Schneider reckons AI shares are oversold, while warning that financing costs and power limits cap any rally this year. Our read is that the memory cycle now turns on who pays for the data centres rather than on how many chips they need.

This story ran in Memory Regained Thursday 12 November’s edition, with the market snapshot, the other two stories, the numbers and the week ahead. Read the whole edition →

More in

All stories →

Saturday 14 November The chip trade cracked on Friday and AMD was the worst stock in the S&P 500
Tuesday 10 November Nvidia fell 4.3% on a boardroom problem while the rest of the chip trade surged
Thursday 1 October Micron's quarterly revenue is nearly five times what it was a year ago

General information and commentary only, not financial advice. It does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs, and reflects the author's own reading of public information at the time of writing, which may be wrong. Sharespective, its people and its clients may hold positions in the companies covered. Do your own research and talk to a licensed adviser.