Every chip Micron can make for the next two years already has a buyer’s name on it. The company’s entire high-bandwidth memory output for 2026 is spoken for under binding multi-year contracts, and the broader memory industry, spanning DRAM, NAND, and HBM, is expected to remain sold out through 2027.
Micron has committed roughly $200 billion to future capacity investments. But new output from those investments isn’t expected to come online until late 2027 at the earliest. Industry analysts broadly predict that meaningful new global memory capacity won’t materialize until 2028.
SK Hynix’s CEO has stated that 2027 will see the industry’s worst-ever memory supply shortage. SK Hynix is one of the three companies, alongside Micron and Samsung, that collectively dominate global memory production. The CEO went further, suggesting that intense competition between supply and demand could persist well into the 2030s, even with aggressive expansion plans underway across the industry.
Training and running large language models requires staggering amounts of high-bandwidth memory. HBM is the specialized, high-performance DRAM that sits directly on AI accelerator chips. Those contracts are the key detail: revenue is locked in. Micron’s 2026 HBM production is fully committed, with that supply tightness bleeding into early 2027.
