On December 4th, US storage chip manufacturer Micron Technology announced on Wednesday that it will exit its Crucial consumer storage business, which includes selling Crucial consumer brand storage products at major retailers, e-commerce platforms, and distributors worldwide.

The growth of data centers driven by artificial intelligence has led to a surge in memory and storage demand. In order to better supply and support our large strategic customers in the faster growing niche market, Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business. ”Sumit Sadana, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Micron Technology, stated.

According to public information, Crucial (Chinese name: Yingruida) is a consumer grade brand under Micron, founded in 1996 and headquartered in Idaho, USA. This brand focuses on selling products such as solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules manufactured by Micron, and is committed to improving the performance of user devices through high-performance, high-quality storage solutions. Crucial is the first direct to consumer memory seller, with a product line covering mainstream consumer and enterprise markets, including various DDR memory modules and PCIe solid-state drives. Its DDR memory modules are widely popular among consumers in desktop and laptop computers.

According to the announcement, Micron currently plans to continue selling Crucial products until February 2026 (the end of the second quarter of the current fiscal year). Starting from March 2026, consumers will no longer be able to purchase Crucial brand memory modules and solid-state drives through PC hardware retailers. During this transition period, the company will work closely with partners and customers, and continue to provide warranty services and support for Crucial products. Micron Technology will continue to support the sales of Micron brand enterprise level products to global commercial channel customers.

Micron also stated that it will try its best to reassign affected employees to internal vacant positions to minimize the impact on employees.

The background for Micron's dissolution of its consumer business is the tight global memory supply chain, with tight semiconductor supplies ranging from flash memory chips used in smartphones to advanced high bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI data centers.

Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan stated that the consumer storage business is not a significant driving force for Micron's business. Micron has long shifted its focus to its HBM business, which has become the most fiercely competitive area between Micron and the world's three largest memory suppliers, SK Hynix and Samsung from South Korea. HBM is a dynamic random access memory that includes vertically stacked chips to reduce power consumption and assist in processing large amounts of data, making it highly valuable in artificial intelligence development. These chips are more expensive than consumer memory and usually offer lucrative profits.

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