Daniel Sparks, The Motley Fool Thu, November 12, 2026 at 3:57 PM EST 5 min read CRWV -6.40% MU -1.02% NVDA -4.19% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Shares in memory chipmaker Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) jumped more than 10% on Nov. 11, trading near $820 as I write this. The jump came the morning after artificial intelligence (AI) cloud provider CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) posted third-quarter results, and much of the chip sector climbed with it.
On the earnings call, CEO Michael Intrator said CoreWeave has 10 times as much qualified demand as available capacity through the end of 2027. It was good news after Micron shares fell around 23% over Nov. 4 and Nov. 5.
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But CoreWeave didn't mention memory once on the call. And I think the link to Micron's sales is less direct than the stock's jump implies.
CoreWeave's third-quarter revenue climbed 168% year over year to around $3.7 billion, accelerating from 112% growth in the second quarter. Revenue backlog (contracted sales it expects to recognize later) hit around $132.5 billion as of Sept. 30, up from around $104 billion three months before. Management also boosted its 2026 revenue outlook to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion, above the $12.4 billion to $13.2 billion range it gave in August.
Plus, the company's charging more. CoreWeave hiked prices by around 25% in July and another 10% later in the quarter. Intrator said pricing has kept rising in the fourth quarter, "more than offsetting cost increases."
He also spoke to one of the worries behind Micron's slide last week, when data center shares fell as traders braced for a slower build-out after Democrats' midterm wins, according to CNBC.
"We also do not see material risks to our 2027 deliveries based on ongoing construction at fully permitted sites," Intrator said.
Not directly. CoreWeave rents out computing power built mainly on Nvidia hardware, so any Micron memory in its data centers probably comes inside gear made by others. Micron does sell high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked chips that sit beside AI processors. And it's working with Nvidia on a custom version of its next-generation HBM for future Nvidia GPUs.
When CoreWeave did lock in storage supply in August, it went elsewhere. The firm signed a multiyear deal for priority access to enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) capacity from Solidigm, a subsidiary of SK Hynix. Micron sells these drives too. Its data center SSD revenue was almost $10 billion last quarter.
Of course, CoreWeave is small next to Micron's AI business. Its entire 2026 capital spending plan calls for $37 billion to $39 billion. Micron's two data center business units took in $34.3 billion in fiscal Q4 2026 (the period ended Sept. 3) alone.
Showing how much AI already drives the memory maker, these units made up around 63% of revenue in fiscal Q4, up from about 61% in fiscal Q3 and about 54% in the same quarter last year.
CoreWeave matters to Micron mostly as a sign of how the overall data center build-out is going. On that front, its report was good news.
Management expects industry DRAM bit shipments to rise at a low-20s percentage rate in both 2027 and 2028, with the industry still short on supply. Micron has also signed deals for the vast majority of its calendar 2027 HBM supply, at much higher prices than a year before.
Customers are even settling for less memory than they want. On Sept. 30, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said Micron sees server unit growth in the high teens in both 2026 and 2027, "supported by a modestly lower rate of content growth than prior expectations, amid tight memory supply."
Put another way, more demand from CoreWeave probably can't turn into many more Micron chips in 2027. It's more likely to show up in what Micron can charge, and in how long the shortage lasts. After all, CoreWeave's own price increases suggest its customers can afford to pay up.
Even after the jump, the stock's around a third below its record closing high of $1,213.56, reached on June 25. And it trades at under 5 times the earnings analysts expect for fiscal 2027, way below the forward price-to-earnings ratio of around 18 for the S&P 500. At that price, investors seem to be betting the shortage ends long before Micron expects.
CoreWeave's report doesn't change a single number in Micron's own outlook. But it does push back on one of the worries that sank the stock last week, and a jump that erases some of that slide makes sense to me. I still think Micron stock is worth buying at this price, mainly because of its own supply and pricing.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
CoreWeave Says Its AI Demand Is 10 Times Its Capacity Through 2027. I Think Micron Stock Is Still Worth Buying. was originally published by The Motley Fool
