The market’s been humming a bullish tune, mostly fueled by the artificial intelligence frenzy. Everyone’s chasing the promise, but promises, I’ve learned, often run into walls. Right now, those walls are made of silicon and a desperate need for electricity. The AI boom isn’t about algorithms; it’s about what’s behind the algorithms. And that means bottlenecks. Two companies, I figured, were positioning themselves to profit from the squeeze.
Micron Technology: The Memory Man
Memory. It’s the one thing everyone forgets they need until it’s gone. In the AI game, it’s vanishing faster than a gambler’s last dollar. Micron Technology (MU +3.28%) is sitting pretty, because they make the stuff. Specifically, High-Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. These chips aren’t just fast; they’re the veins pumping data to the AI brains. Without them, those large language models are just expensive paperweights.
Demand is through the roof, naturally. Data centers are gobbling up HBM like sharks in a feeding frenzy. That’s good for Micron, but it’s also creating a ripple effect. The entire memory chain is stretched thin. DRAM, the everyday workhorse, is getting squeezed. NAND, the long-term storage, is feeling the pressure too. Prices are starting to climb, and that’s not just good news for Micron; it’s a warning signal for anyone relying on cheap computing.
They’re playing the long game, doubling down on capital expenditures, trying to build more capacity. It’s a race against time, and frankly, a bit of a gamble. But they’ve got their hands in both DRAM and NAND, giving them a bit more leverage. Right now, everything they make is spoken for. That’s not a sustainable position, but it buys them time. Time to build, time to consolidate, time to profit.
Applied Digital: Power Broker
AI needs brains, sure, but brains need juice. A lot of it. And that’s where Applied Digital (APLD 2.10%) comes in. They used to chase Bitcoin, a fool’s errand if you ask me. But they learned something valuable in the process: how to source cheap power and build massive facilities. Now, they’re applying that expertise to AI data centers.
They’re shedding the Bitcoin baggage, spinning off cloud computing, merging with EKSO Bionics to form ChronoScale. It’s a bit of a messy restructuring, but the core idea is sound: become the power broker for the AI revolution. They’re aiming to become a Real Estate Investment Trust, a REIT, which means they’ll be focused on owning and operating these data centers. A solid, if unglamorous, play.
They’ve already completed the first building at their Polaris Forge 1 campus, a hundred megawatts of power dedicated to CoreWeave. They’re planning to expand to four hundred megawatts by 2027. They’ve also landed a two-hundred-megawatt customer at Polaris Forge 2. And they’re in talks with a couple of big cloud providers for another nine hundred megawatts. The scale of these projects is… ambitious.
They’ve got backing from Macquarie Group, a solid financial partner. That helps, because building these facilities isn’t cheap. It’s a risky game, building empires on electricity, but someone has to do it. Applied Digital is betting they’ll be the ones holding the switch.
The AI story isn’t just about algorithms and innovation. It’s about the mundane realities of supply and demand, the bottlenecks that choke growth, and the companies that are positioned to profit from the squeeze. These two, I figured, were worth a closer look. But remember, in this game, there are no guarantees. Just probabilities, and a healthy dose of cynicism.
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2026-01-15 19:22