On Wednesday, Micron Technology announced it will exit the consumer RAM business in 2026, ending 29 years of selling RAM and SSDs to PC builders and enthusiasts under the Crucial brand. The company cited heavy demand from AI data centers as the reason for abandoning its consumer brand, a move that will remove one of the most recognizable names in the do-it-yourself PC upgrade market.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer at Micron Technology, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
Micron said it will continue shipping Crucial consumer products through the end of its fiscal second quarter in February 2026 and will honor warranties on existing products. The company will continue selling Micron-branded enterprise products to commercial customers and plans to redeploy affected employees to other positions within the company.
Crucial launched in 1996 during the Pentium era as Micron’s consumer brand for RAM and storage upgrades. Over the years, the brand expanded to encompass other memory-related products such as SSDs, flash memory cards, and portable storage drives. Micron Technology has been manufacturing RAM since 1981.
Consumer RAM market squeezed by AI infrastructure
The surprise announcement from Micron follows a period of rapidly escalating memory prices, as we reported in November. A typical 32GB DDR5 RAM kit that cost around $82 in August now sells for about $310, and higher-capacity kits have seen even steeper increases.