3 Ways to Invest in the Booming Memory Market
Written by Geoffrey Seiler for The Motley Fool -> Micron is a top way to play the booming DRAM market. The DRAM - Roundhill Memory ETF is a great way to get exposure to international memory makers. The memory market is booming, with TrendForce recently raising its global memor
The DRAM - Roundhill Memory ETF is a great way to get exposure to international memory makers.
The memory market is booming, with TrendForce recently raising its global memory forecasts for both 2026 and 2027. It now sees the market hitting $889.3 billion in 2026, with $618.7 billion coming from DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) and $270.6 billion from NAND (flash). That's up from a prior outlook of $551.6 billion. For 2027, it raised its forecast from $842.7 billion to $1.28 trillion.
Both the DRAM and NAND markets have been seeing prices surge due to a demand-supply imbalance, stemming from the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure build-out. Graphics processing units (GPUs) and other AI chips need to be packaged with high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialized form of DRAM, to optimize performance, and the shift toward inference and agentic AI is increasing demand. In turn, with DRAM manufacturers focused on producing high-margin HBM, prices for ordinary DRAM have also gone through the roof.
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NAND prices have also been flying higher. The industry cut back production after flash prices crashed following the pandemic, and it has been slow to come back online, with the big memory makers largely focused on DRAM and HBM. At the same time, demand for huge solid-state drives (SSDs) that use flash has been soaring due to AI.
Let's look at three ways investors can play the torrid memory market with two semiconductor stocks and one exchange-traded fund (ETF) .
Micron (NASDAQ: MU) is one of the world's big three DRAM makers, and the only one based in the U.S. About 80% of its revenue comes from DRAM, with the rest largely from NAND.
The company has been riding the memory wave, with surging revenue and ballooning gross margins . Last quarter, saw its revenue nearly triple to $23.9 billion, while its gross margins climbed from 36.8% a year ago to 74.4%. That led to its adjusted EPS skyrocketing from $1.56 a year ago to $12.20 in its fiscal Q2.
