Thanks to the boom of AI in the world of tech – or at least in its current popular form, LLMs – prices of memory modules have been creeping up, to put it mildly. And while this may affect the average tech enthusiast when it comes to their ability to pay for these rising prices, the same is probably less true for the megacorps developing said AIs. Which may be why Micron Technology is winding down its consumer-facing Crucial brand.
Or, to quote company EVP and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana, “the AI-driven growth in the data centre has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for your larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments”.
As a result, you’ll see less of Crucial products on shelves past February 2026. Micron says that it will continue shipping consumer products until then, but it will continue to provide warranty service and support for said brand after that point. Which is nice, because the company has just recently given a price to its LPCAMM2 DDR5 RAM.
While memory module makers like Micron cash in on the AI industry boom, this represents another blow to the consumer market. There are already rumours of GPU brand NVIDIA stopping the bundling of VRAM to its board partners. Whether this ends up being true or not, with one less choice in RAM and storage options, building your own PC is going to be a lot more expensive, if it’s even possible in the first place.
(Source: Micron)
