RIP Crucial: Memory Supplier Micron Exits Consumer Market to Chase AI

Michael Kan

With Micron’s Crucial brand saying farewell after nearly 30 years, it looks like the memory shortage is about to get a lot worse for consumer electronics.

In a shocker, Micron is exiting the consumer market for memory products, including DRAM and SSD, which is poised to worsen amid an ongoing memory shortage. 

US-based Micron will retire memory products sold under the Crucial brand, which includes NVMe SSDs and external storage, as well as DDR4 and DDR5 RAM.

Consumer shipments will continue until February 2026. Going forward, Micron will focus on supplying memory for AI data centers, a more lucrative business that has been hogging memory supply at the expense of consumer products.

“Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,” EVP Sumit Sadana said in the announcement. 

Research firm TrendForce reports that Micron was the third largest supplier of DRAM behind Samsung and SK Hynix. The three companies also dominated the DRAM market with a 92% market share.

As a result, Micron’s exit leaves a sizable hole in the consumer memory market, depriving PC builders of the trusted Crucial brand. It also remains unclear if any company can fill the gap when analysts are warning that the memory shortage could last for years. Samsung and SK Hynix are also reportedly prioritizing profitability over risky expansions.

In addition, the news might not bode well for PC graphics cards since Micron supplied GDDR7 video memory to Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series, in addition to Samsung and SK Hynix. We’ve reached out to Micron about what impact this might have on its GDDR7 business for consumer GPUs, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.

In NAND Flash, used for SSDs, Micron had a 13% share back in Q2, according to TrendForce, which looked at both shipments for consumer and enterprise systems.