SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Micron has kept future memory prices reasonable while rivals charged “extortionate” rates. He posted it after Micron stock closed lower for a fourth straight session.
Musk was replying to an analyst’s X post that summarized a bullish JPMorgan note on the memory chipmaker. Yet the note’s strong contract numbers did little to stop Tuesday’s selling.
Why Micron Stock Slid Despite a $150 Billion Backlog
Micron shares closed at $953.19 on Tuesday, down 3.62% for the day. Over five sessions, they lost 11.54%.
Still, Micron stock remains up roughly 223% in 2026.
Much of the pressure came from China. ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), the country’s leading memory maker, reported progress on denser DRAM designs. As a result, investors worry that new supply could end the current shortage.
However, JPMorgan analysts see locked-in demand. They count 26 long-term customer deals covering over 35% of Micron’s revenue through 2030.
In addition, the bank puts contracted backlog at $150 billion, with $32 billion of customer cash already committed. According to the analyst’s summary of the note, buyers have also reserved over 75% of next year’s output.
Could Fair Pricing Become Micron’s Edge When Shortages End?
Musk framed Micron’s pricing restraint as a loyalty play, one that could pay off for Micron stock later. In his view, customers will remember which suppliers squeezed them during the shortage.
Musk buys Micron memory indirectly, since his AI data centers near Memphis run Nvidia chips built with it. In April, he also named Micron among existing suppliers while discussing his Terafab chip project. Still, neither side has announced a direct deal.
Meanwhile, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have shifted capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked chips inside AI accelerators. That shift tightened conventional DRAM supply and lifted prices, helping Samsung’s record quarterly profit.
JPMorgan expects the shortage to last through 2028. If that holds, Micron’s pricing discipline matters most afterward, when buyers can choose again. Until then, Micron stock trades between Wall Street price targets near $1,500 and fears of a Chinese supply wave.
