Markets MU JUL 09, 2026

Micron commits $250B to US plants through 2035, MU up 7% as Salesforce slides on KeyBanc cut

Micron's raised domestic capex plan lifted the semi complex Thursday; CRM fell 4.5% after KeyBanc cut it to sector weight on Agentforce concerns.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

Micron Technology said Thursday it’ll spend more than $250 billion in the United States through 2035, an upsized commitment centered on its New York semiconductor campus that pulls the memory maker even deeper into the Trump administration’s onshoring narrative. Bloomberg and Reuters reported the plan raises Micron’s June 2025 figure of $200 billion, itself a $30 billion increase on an earlier pledge. Up to $3 billion is earmarked to strengthen the broader U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.

MU climbed more than 7% in early trading, per CNBC, extending a year-to-date gain of more than 250% for a stock that first crossed a $1 trillion market cap in May. The rest of the complex went with it. Applied Materials, KLA, and Lam Research each rose 7%. ARM Holdings jumped 11%. Sandisk added 7.6%. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) closed 2.5% higher.

The tape rewarded the story wholesale.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.30% to 26,206.89, the S&P 500 added 0.81% to 7,543.64, and the Dow gained 139.02 points to 52,487.41. What’s notable isn’t the magnitude of any single reaction but the sequencing: a memory manufacturer with commodity-cyclical DNA is now the vehicle through which markets price both the AI capex cycle and industrial policy at once. The CHIPS-era framing that began under Biden hasn’t been discarded so much as absorbed into a different political register.

Salesforce didn’t share the mood. CRM fell 4.5% after KeyBanc’s Jackson Ader cut the stock to sector weight from overweight in a Wednesday note, writing that it’s “difficult to find evidence of future upside.” His channel work was blunter: “We attend more Salesforce partner and customer events than any other company in our coverage, and feedback from those customers has been consistent in two ways: 1) customers’ data is not in order to do meaningful AI work; and 2) Agentforce, as a product, just isn’t there.” Valuation, Ader added, isn’t a thesis: “We have little to no evidence that compels us to pitch CRM as a strong buying opportunity other than valuation, and when that’s the case we think it’s time to step back.”

Jim Cramer, whose Charitable Trust holds CRM at under 1%, said “not yet” on the dip. The split is legible: the market is paying for shovels, not agents.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.