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How Far Can the "Super Cycle" in Storage Chip Industry Go

Recently, South Korea's Samsung Electronics, U.S. Micron Technology, and South Korea's SK Hynix, three globally leading memory chip manufacturers, have successively crossed the trillion-dollar market value threshold. Industry insiders believe this phenomenon indicates that the AI (Artificial Intelligence) boom is expanding from computing chips to storage chips. As data storage becomes the fundamental resource for AI systems, it is increasingly becoming a key pillar industry in the AI era. However, how far this "super cycle" in the storage chip industry can go is also constrained by various factors.

In the past few years, AI hardware investment focus has mainly been on computing chip companies like Nvidia and AMD, but without support from high-end storage chips, AI computing power cannot be fully unleashed. Due to surging demand for high-end AI-related storage and supply shortages, storage chip prices have continued to rise, prompting strong reactions from capital markets.

The core reason for the recent surge in stock prices of storage chip companies is the explosive demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM). SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron are the main manufacturers of HBM, and their products have become critical for supporting data center expansion.

Storage chips have long been regarded as cyclical products, with prices fluctuating significantly with inventory and demand cycles. The current rise is driven by long-term structural demand from AI infrastructure development. The market no longer views this rally as a typical cyclical rebound but believes the storage industry may enter a longer-lasting, more sustained high prosperity phase than before.

Market research firm TrendForce pointed out that in the first quarter of 2026, the continued growth in AI and data center demand will further exacerbate the global memory supply and demand imbalance and enhance suppliers' pricing power.

Major clients in the AI field generally lock in capacity in advance to ensure supply. Long-term supply agreements give leading storage companies more stable revenue expectations and also alleviate concerns in capital markets about the future sustained growth of storage stocks.

However, the structural changes brought by AI demand do not mean that the storage chip industry has completely escaped cyclical fluctuations.

The storage chip industry often experiences cycles of shortages, price hikes, capacity expansion, oversupply, and price reductions. The current AI-driven demand prolongs and strengthens the industry’s upward cycle. Companies are expanding capacity on the back of high profits, but if future demand growth slows, oversupply is likely to reoccur.

Although Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung's stock prices have surged significantly in the short term, Fonda, a U.S. investment management firm, believes that memory stocks are showing signs of "bubble-like" characteristics, and the company is reducing its related holdings. Additionally, storage chip companies are vulnerable to export controls, tariffs, industrial policies, investment reviews, and supply chain changes. All these factors will influence how far this "super cycle" in the storage chip industry can go. $MU