Micron to halt consumer sales, focus on more profitable AI-driven growth instead
Micron is making a major change to its business model.
The Boise memory-chip manufacturer says it plans to exit its consumer business and focus instead on selling more products to large companies to support the artificial intelligence-driven data center boom.
Micron’s consumer business, which operates under the brand Crucial, sells computer memory products like dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, and storage products like solid-state drives, or SSDs, directly to regular customers, who use the products to upgrade or fix their personal computers or store documents, photos, music and videos.
The company said in a news release that it will halt the sale of Crucial-branded products at key retailers, e-tailers and distributors worldwide but continue shipments until the end of February.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said in the release. “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.”
Micron’s stock opened Wednesday, the day of the announcement, at $236.98 and closed Thursday at $226.65, a 4.5% decline.
Last summer, Micron renewed a lease on its 63,025-square-foot Crucial industrial-and-office site at 3475 E. Commercial Court in Meridian. It’s unclear what will happen to the space now.
Micron did not respond Thursday to questions about how many workers Crucial employs and whether they will be laid off or land jobs elsewhere at the company. Spokesperson Mark Plungy told the Idaho Statesman by email that Micron is in its quiet period before the company’s next earnings release on Dec. 17 and cannot comment beyond the news release.
Many consumers expressed disappointment with Micron’s decision online.
“Crucial is the only RAM I’ve ever bought, and has been the RAM in every system I’ve made since I made my first one in 1998,” one person commented on Crucial’s Facebook post about the news.
Some accused the company of abandoning its loyal consumer line in favor of the more profitable AI sector. Micron posted record sales in its latest quarter because of the growth of AI data centers, which need high-bandwidth memory chips, also called HBM, a type of DRAM, and those chips are pricer than consumer memory.
This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 4:42 PM.
