Micron Stock Is Down 28%, and Here Is What Investors Need to Know

Surging demand for memory hardware has given Micron extreme pricing power.

The memory hardware business is cyclical, and eventually it will cool, but it's unclear when that might happen.

Micron's stock decline was part of a broader sell-off among memory chip stocks.

Micron (NASDAQ: MU) has been one of the hottest stocks on the market this year, and even became a trillion-dollar company in May. Its stock peaked on June 25, but it has since slid sharply. As of market open on Monday, it was down by more than 27% from that all-time high, and valued at around $993 billion.

Considering its recent pullback, some investors may be wondering if the party is over or if this is a temporary slump. As we've consistently seen, it's likely the latter.

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Let's start with why Micron stock soared: the semiconductor company 's central role in the artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush. It's one of just three major players worldwide that make memory hardware. Without large volumes of memory in their data centers and on their AI hardware, companies wouldn't be able to train AI models at scale, and the AI tools we interact with today would be much less effective.

As the data center build-out has accelerated, demand for memory hardware has skyrocketed. Supply, however, hasn't nearly kept up, as it takes a fair amount of time to add production capacity. This has put memory-chip makers like Micron in a powerful position, allowing them to charge high premiums for their wares. Look at how much Micron's gross margins have grown year over year: