The AI trade spent the week in the memory aisle. SanDisk rose 8 percent to $1,382 in Tuesday's session and reached $1,630 by week's end, Western Digital climbed from $457 to $505, and Micron pushed through $978 as investors priced in a shortage that suppliers describe in years, not quarters, with the Roundhill Memory ETF adding 8 percent in the week's sharpest session.
Two catalysts set the tone early. Temasek, Singapore's sovereign fund, disclosed direct investments in Samsung and SK Hynix and framed AI semiconductors as undervalued. Micron chief business officer Sumit Sadana warned that 2027 supply will be tighter than this year's, and Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan says memory makers are effectively sold out for the next two years. The group still trades at trailing multiples of roughly 19 to 21 times earnings, modest against the growth on the tape: Micron's latest quarterly revenue rose 345.7 percent from a year earlier, SanDisk's 371.6 percent, and Western Digital's 43.8 percent.
SanDisk supplied the hardest numbers. Alongside its fiscal fourth-quarter results the company disclosed multiyear customer agreements worth $93.9 billion across eight clients, three of them US hyperscale data centre operators, and authorized a $14 billion share repurchase. "We are optimizing for growth, sustainability and returns," chief financial officer Luis Visoso said. "As we do that, we expect to return 100% of excess cash to shareholders after investing in the business."
Seoul carried the close. The Kospi returned to bull market territory, 20 percent above its July low after rising more than 10 percent in five trading days, and added roughly 2 percent more in Friday's Asian session on strength in SK Hynix and Samsung. The move spilled into US listings, where SK Hynix ended the stretch near $169, Seagate near $941 and the Roundhill fund at $58.
Attention now funnels toward August 26, when Nvidia reports the quarter ended July 26. Consensus calls for about $92 billion in revenue against the company's $91 billion guide and earnings near $2.08 per share, roughly double a year ago, with data centre revenue expected near $85 billion of the total. Growth of that size still lands near 97 percent year over year, yet the guided 11.5 percent sequential pace would be the slowest in more than a year, and options pricing implies a 6.75 percent post-report move. Nvidia has beaten its own guidance by $3 billion to $3.6 billion for three straight quarters, which shifts the real test to its third-quarter outlook, where consensus sits near $107 billion.
Memory is no longer a side bet on that print. Component costs now account for an estimated 40 to 50 percent of a Vera Rubin system build, against a historical 15 to 20 percent, so the week's winners sit inside Nvidia's margin story rather than beside it.
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