The memory chip crunch is paying off for this US company
The memory chip crunch is paying off for this US company
内存芯片短缺正让这家美国公司获益匪浅
The AI boom has fueled dozens of new startups and minted a new class of billionaires. It has also produced a serious shortage of memory chips — a critical component for compute-hungry AI models — which some predict could persist through 2027. 人工智能的繁荣催生了数十家初创企业，并造就了一批新的亿万富翁。这也导致了内存芯片的严重短缺——这是计算密集型人工智能模型的关键组件——一些人预测这种短缺可能会持续到 2027 年。
This era of RAMageddon isn’t just a corporate problem. As demand spikes and squeezes supply, prices are rising and trickling down to consumers. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned just a week ago that price increases for its products are unavoidable. 这场“内存末日”（RAMageddon）不仅仅是企业面临的问题。随着需求激增并挤压供应，价格正在上涨，并最终转嫁给消费者。苹果公司首席执行官蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）一周前刚刚警告称，其产品涨价已不可避免。
But amid this Mad Max-esque fight for memory chips, some companies are coming out ahead. Micron, the largest U.S. computer-memory chip maker — with a market cap of $1.2 trillion — is one of them. 但在这种如同《疯狂的麦克斯》般激烈的内存芯片争夺战中，一些公司却脱颖而出。美光科技（Micron）作为美国最大的计算机内存芯片制造商，市值已达 1.2 万亿美元，正是其中之一。
That hasn’t always been the case. The company’s shares were trading around $83 in early 2024 (with a market cap of about $91 billion) and closed today at $1,048.51. 情况并非一直如此。2024 年初，该公司股价约为 83 美元（市值约 910 亿美元），而今天收盘价已达 1,048.51 美元。
The company reported third-quarter earnings after markets closed Wednesday, and the results sent shares soaring more than 13%. Revenue quadrupled to $41.45 billion compared with the same period a year ago. The company’s profit, meanwhile, rose from $1.88 billion to an incredible $28.2 billion year-over-year. 该公司在周三收盘后发布了第三季度财报，业绩推动股价飙升超过 13%。营收同比增长四倍，达到 414.5 亿美元。与此同时，公司利润从去年同期的 18.8 亿美元激增至惊人的 282 亿美元。
The Idaho-based company also gave investors a positive outlook, forecasting fourth-quarter revenue of between $49 billion and $51 billion. 这家总部位于爱达荷州的公司还向投资者提供了积极的展望，预计第四季度营收将在 490 亿美元至 510 亿美元之间。
The strong results arrive the same week Micron inked a deal to supply AI lab Anthropic with memory and storage chips. Micron also disclosed that it participated in Anthropic’s Series H funding round, though it didn’t disclose how much it invested. 在发布强劲财报的同一周，美光还与人工智能实验室 Anthropic 签署了一项协议，为其供应内存和存储芯片。美光还披露其参与了 Anthropic 的 H 轮融资，但未透露具体投资金额。