Sandisk Is Up 613% in 2026 and Micron Isn't Far Behind. Which AI Memory Stock Has More Room to Run?

Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) has gained more than 613% so far in 2026, and Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) is up less but still a lot at a modest 272%. At times this year, both stocks were up even higher than these percentages. Both numbers trace back to the same tailwind: the artificial intelligence (AI) data center build-out has created a memory shortage severe enough that suppliers could set their own prices.

The question for anyone looking at these stocks today isn't whether AI memory demand is real. It clearly is. Which of these two already-massive winners still has the most room left to climb this year and into the future?

Image source: Getty Images.

Sandisk's story is almost entirely about NAND flash

Sandisk, spun off from Western Digital last year, makes NAND flash, the memory used for long-term storage rather than active computing. At a recent Goldman Sachs-sponsored technology conference, Sandisk representatives said data centers now make up more than half the entire NAND market, a shift it called a watershed moment, according to Investing.com. At the conference, leadership said that Sandisk has signed eight long-term supply agreements with major data center customers over the past nine months and has already booked roughly two-thirds of its fiscal 2028 bit supply.

The company is also developing a new product called High Bandwidth Flash, aimed at solving a memory bottleneck in AI inference workloads. That's a genuinely strong position. But Sandisk's own fiscal fourth-quarter revenue jump, up 372% year over year, was driven heavily by pricing rather than shipping more chips, NAND prices have risen so quickly that there's a real question about how long that can last. Historically, prices have come back down once new supply catches up, per market research firm TrendForce. The stock has already wobbled over concerns that the valuation may be getting ahead of itself. In other words, Sandisk is riding a huge AI-driven memory boom with strong demand and new products, but the stock is also facing a real risk that today's soaring prices (and valuation) may not last.

Micron's growth is broader and arguably less fully priced in

Micron makes both NAND and DRAM, which is the faster memory used for active computing, and its fiscal 2026 numbers are staggering in their own right: record revenue of $133.2 billion for the year, with fourth-quarter DRAM revenue alone up 343% to $39.8 billion. The more important detail is where that DRAM growth is coming from.

Micron is working with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) on what it describes as the industry's first custom high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, design, built specifically around Nvidia's chip roadmap rather than sold as an off-the-shelf part. That kind of co-designed relationship is harder for a rival to copy than simply building more factories. At the same time, Micron's data center SSD revenue approached $10 billion last quarter, more than 10 times what it was a year earlier, according to Benzinga.

This all sounds wordy and confusing, but in short, Micron is effectively competing in Sandisk's own market while also starting to run a franchise tied directly into Nvidia's AI chip plans, and its stock has still risen at a slower rate than Sandisk's has this year. Sandisk has already had its run, and in the long term, Micron has more room and more chances to bring in cash.

I'd lean toward Micron here. It's winning in storage at the same time Sandisk is, while also capturing the DRAM and HBM side of the AI memory boom, where Nvidia's reliance on custom-designed chips gives Micron a stickier, harder-to-replace role.

From an analyst perspective, both have Strong Buy ratings, but Goldman Sachs' analysts see greater upside for Micron, with expectations for strong revenue and guidance this quarter and into the future.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Goldman Sachs Group, Micron Technology, Nvidia, and Western Digital. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.