AI Has Made Memory Chips More Valuable Than Oil
Memory is now worth more than oil. Staying that way will depend on how much the notoriously volatile industry can make recent changes stick.The world's three largest memory-chip makers -- Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology -- now carry market capitalizations of more than $1 trillion each. That puts them about 22% above the combined market cap of the world's three most valuable oil companies, even with Saudi Aramco weighing in on its own at nearly $1.8 trillion.Values have soared even further down the memory chain. Flash-memory maker Sandisk has seen its market cap nearly triple since March and is now worth nearly as much as PetroChina -- Asia's largest oil producer.The spending power of artificial intelligence's largest investors means a significant percentage of future memory production will be covered by multiyear contracts with more stable pricing terms. UBS analyst Tim Arcuri estimates that such contracts will cover as much as 30% of shipments of total dynamic rand
