Micron’s stock gained 3% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the company dropped stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter results and told investors to expect even more growth next quarter. The company reported $3.03 in adjusted earnings per share, beating the $2.86 that Wall Street expected. Revenue reached $11.32 billion, topping the $11.22 billion consensus. The company also said it expects $12.5 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter. That’s almost a full billion more than the $11.94 billion estimate analysts had been working with. Micron’s net income for the quarter came in at $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share, a massive jump from $887 million or 79 cents per share from the same quarter last year. The stock has almost doubled in 2025, and this latest report just added another jolt. Micron gains as AI pushes up cloud memory revenue Micron makes memory and storage chips, including high-bandwidth memory, which is a key piece in artificial intelligence systems. That puts the company in direct play with firms like Nvidia, whose AI chips need huge amounts of this specialized memory to work at scale. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called it out directly, saying, “As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead.” Micron’s biggest revenue generator right now is its unit that sells memory to cloud providers. That segment pulled in $4.54 billion during the quarter, more than triple what it made last year. The demand is being driven by AI platforms, many of which rely on cloud services powered by high-performance memory setups. But not all of the company’s operations are growing. Micron’s data center unit reported $1.57 billion in revenue, which is a 22% decline compared to the same period a year ago. Despite all the hype around AI infrastructure, the drop shows that not every corner of the business is riding the wave at the same speed. The company’s total revenue was up 46% year-over-year. That kind of jump would usually light up the entire tech sector, but the broader market wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Market pulls back as AI momentum cools across big tech On the same day Micron reported strong earnings, the S&P 500 closed down 0.55% at 6,656.92. That came after it touched a new intraday high earlier in the session. The Nasdaq Composite dropped almost 1%, ending at 22,573.47, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 88.76 points, or 0.19%, closing at 46,292.78. The tech pullback came as investors started questioning whether the AI rally could really last. Nvidia lost 2.8% just one day after it said it would invest $100 billion in OpenAI. The announcement had briefly sent tech stocks soaring, but now some investors are comparing it to the dot-com bubble, especially the dynamic between buyer and supplier. Another big loser was Oracle, which had jumped more than 50% over three months on AI hype. It slid 4.4% on Tuesday. The concern isn’t just the money, it’s also about whether the U.S. power grid can handle the growth plans these companies are laying out. Despite the pullback, smaller stocks fared a bit better. The Russell 2000 hit an all-time high during the session before closing down 0.2%. Enthusiasm over the Federal Reserve’s rate cut last week helped support the index. Still, market watchers are holding their breath for Friday’s release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the inflation measure the Fed watches most closely. That number could shift expectations again around whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the central bank will keep cutting rates. Powell said Tuesday that “equity prices are fairly highly valued” and called the current path “a challenging situation.” Get up to $30,050 in trading rewards when you join Bybit today
