Costco Warns AI Memory Chip Inflation Is Squeezing Electronics Prices

Micron Technology is heading into its Sept. 30 earnings report with expectations high after the memory-chip maker's shares soared almost 279% this year. Wall Street is looking for sales of $50.91 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, up almost 350% year over year, according to TipRanks, with the company expected to earn $31.49 a share versus $3.03 in the same quarter last year. Ahead of the release, Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy kept a Buy rating and $1,500 price objective, expecting another beat-and-raise and saying Micron's strategic client agreements could account for 40% of manufacturing bits in the next three to five years. Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso also maintained a Buy rating and $1,500 target, saying memory demand should exceed supply through at least 2028 on higher pricing for commodity memory and high-bandwidth memory. Micron stock rose 0.8% Thursday after a volatile week, and investors will focus on Sept. 30 on pricing expectations, gross margins and whether tight memory supply can continue into 2027 and beyond.

Advanced Micro Devices crossed the $1 trillion market capitalization mark for the first time on Monday, with shares surging 9.9% amid a broader tech-stock rally. The milestone caps a September in which CEO Lisa Su sat at President Trump's table during the state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping, two seats from Trump and next to Elon Musk, and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange with first lady Melania Trump. AMD stock is up 193% year to date, far outpacing Nvidia's 22% gain. The chipmaker beat Wall Street expectations across the board for the second quarter, posting record non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.66 against consensus estimates of $1.61, with total revenue up 50% year over year to a record $11.5 billion and data center revenue more than doubling to $6.7 billion. AMD projected second-half 2026 server CPU revenue to grow 80% year over year and 70% in 2027, and expects data center revenues to more than double in 2027 with AI GPUs growing well over 100%. The company also unveiled its next-generation Instinct MI450 Series GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC Venice CPUs for its Helios rack-scale AI systems, alongside deals for Microsoft to deploy Helios across Azure AI services beginning in the second half of 2026 and for Anthropic to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of Instinct MI450 GPUs beginning in the first half of 2027, a deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars over time, with AMD committing to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic.