--- title: "Micron or SanDisk: Billionaire Israel Englander Picks One AI Memory Stock Over the Other" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/286826007.md" description: "Billionaire investor Israel Englander has increased his stake in Micron Technology (MU) by 47%, favoring it over SanDisk (SNDK) amid a surge in AI-driven demand for memory products. Micron's strong performance, with a 591% share price increase over the past year, is attributed to constrained supply and high demand for advanced memory solutions. Analysts believe AI is creating a longer memory cycle, with a Buy rating and a price target of $1,000 for MU shares, indicating potential upside." datetime: "2026-05-18T22:30:43.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/286826007.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286826007.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/286826007.md) --- # Micron or SanDisk: Billionaire Israel Englander Picks One AI Memory Stock Over the Other Few investors on Wall Street carry as much weight as Israel Englander. The billionaire investor, whose net worth is estimated at around $26.5 billion, built Millennium Management into one of the world's largest hedge funds, overseeing over $87 billion in assets and thousands of employees across global markets. ### Claim 55% Off TipRanks Forget margin or options. Here's how the pros trade SNDK That kind of track record naturally makes investors take notice of where Englander is placing his bets today. And lately, memory stocks have emerged as one of the market's hottest AI trades, as surging AI infrastructure spending has created massive demand for memory products and helped send valuations across parts of the sector skyrocketing over the past year. Both Micron (NASDAQ:MU) and SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) have been huge beneficiaries, but it looks like Englander currently favors one over the other, recently adding heavily to one position while reducing the stake in its counterpart. So, let's dig deeper into these AI memory stocks and find out what's behind the billionaire investor's latest moves. **Micron** We'll start with Micron, a company that has traditionally had a quirky reputational problem. That's not down to any wrongdoings at the firm, but directly related to the industry it operates in. Micron produces computer memory and storage products, such as DRAM, a type of high-speed memory used for active computing tasks, HBM (high-bandwidth memory), a more advanced form of memory designed to deliver extremely fast data processing for AI workloads and graphics applications, and NAND flash, storage memory used to store data in devices such as smartphones, SSDs, and data centers. But this is an industry known to be extremely cyclical and prone to boom-and-bust periods, where demand exceeds supply for a period before the trend reverses sharply. These kinds of dynamics have a huge impact on earnings and pricing power. However, a shift appears to be underway. The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has driven a surge in demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced storage. This AI-led wave has pushed customer commitments to unprecedented levels, with Micron already signaling that its entire 2026 HBM supply is fully allocated. At the same time, constrained industry capacity has created a supply-demand imbalance that has sharply lifted memory pricing across the market. These conditions have driven record sales, margins, and profits for Micron, fueling a strong rally in its share price, which, even after a recent pullback, has gained a huge 591% over the past year. The key question for investors now is whether AI has structurally transformed the memory industry, or whether this is another cyclical upswing, albeit on a much larger scale. That remains to be seen, but it looks like Englander has faith in the company's ability to continue performing strongly. During Q1, Englander's Millennium bought 511,679 MU shares, increasing its stake by 47% to 1,142,295 shares. Those holdings are currently worth about $778 million. Assessing the memory giant's prospects, D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria thinks the market may still be underestimating the durability of current memory demand. "We believe artificial intelligence is creating a longer-than-usual memory cycle as compute deployment and demand generation exist in a positive feedback loop, creating a structurally higher ceiling for memory pricing and demand," Luria explained. "The market is still framing the cycle through the lens of prior downturns, which appears to underestimate the demand environment, especially relative to the rest of the semi complex. Combined with Micron's node leadership and what we see as a long duration earnings power story, we see meaningful upside to shares." Conveying his confidence, Luria assigns MU shares a Buy rating, while his $1,000 price target offers 12-month upside of ~47%. (To watch Luria's track record, click here) 27 other analysts join Luria in the bull camp, while an additional 3 Holds can't detract from a Strong Buy consensus view. However, at $640.74, the average price target points to a one-year decline of 6%. Given this discrepancy, watch out for revisions shortly. (See **Micron stock forecast**) ### Related Stocks - [MU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MU.US.md) - [MULL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MULL.US.md) - [MUU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MUU.US.md) - [DRAM.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DRAM.US.md) - [SNDK.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SNDK.US.md) - [SNDKV.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SNDKV.US.md) ## Related News & Research - [Micron At A Crossroads Of AI Memory Boom And Policy Risk](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286431519.md) - [Micron Stock (MU) Surges 154% YTD; Do Analysts See More Upside?](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286651011.md) - [Forget Nvidia: New Memory-Focused ETF Soars 90% As CEO Calls Chips AI's 'Biggest Bottleneck'](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286257549.md) - [Micron and SanDisk Stocks Fall, but One Top Analyst Sees Massive Upside Ahead](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286929313.md) - [Is Micron Stock Expensive at $725? Here's the Math on Why Shares Are Still Dirt Cheap.](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286878649.md)