From PC World: The AI boom has claimed another victim: Crucial, Micron’s consumer storage brand that the company says will wind down in 2026 to focus on its enterprise businesses.
Micron said that it will close Crucial in February 2026, though it will continue to support Crucial products and provide warranty support. (The company did not say for how long, however.)
If this feels familiar, it should. AI hyperscalers have sucked up the available supply of many components that also feature inside the PC; two of those are DRAM and storage, both of which Micron’s Crucial business sold to consumers. Black Friday may have been literally the last chance for deals on DRAM and SSDs, as prices in DRAM are skyrocketing and SSD prices have begun to increase as well. Some PC makers are warning that they will increase prices later in December because of rising component costs.
Meanwhile, many of those same components are in high demand by enterprise AI businesses. The logic is simple: Either compete to sell those same products at the lowest margin for consumers, or sell memory and storage at whatever prices well-funded enterprise businesses are willing to pay to build out their own AI deployments.
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