Until mid-last year, SanDisk looked like an unremarkable NAND flash memory company. It has since reinvented itself as an AI-era blue chip.

Its share price has jumped 976% in five months in a dramatic reversal. Once best known for memory cards for digital cameras or USB drives, SanDisk is now emerging as a leading beneficiary of the AI era.

A recent Sherwood report shows the mood was very different as recently as August last year, at a semiconductor conference in the United States. Most experts expected growth in 2026 to be moderate. But from September, demand to store AI-related data surged, rapidly changing the outlook. Storing the massive context data generated by AI required high-performance memory chips, leading to a market reappraisal of memory chips and storage.

Products that had long been overlooked at the center of the tech industry are now emerging as essential elements in solving bottlenecks, a key technical challenge facing AI.

SanDisk launched as an independent listed company after being spun off from Western Digital in February last year. It drew little attention at first, but became the biggest beneficiary of the sharp rise in memory chip prices that began in September. As of the end of 2023, its market capitalization increased by more than $50 billion to $65 billion. SanDisk is also seen as having secured cost competitiveness and higher profitability than rivals thanks to a joint venture with Japan's Kioxia.

According to market research firm TrendForce, NAND prices have risen more than 300% since September, and DRAM has climbed 280%. Semiconductor makers can increase output without additional costs, so profitability improves exponentially when prices rise. SanDisk faced a supply shortage so severe late last year that it could not meet customer demand and said "price hike opportunities will continue."

Nvidia's moves also had a positive impact on SanDisk's share rise. Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan (왐시 모한) mentioned Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiling a new chip at the CES 2026 IT show in Las Vegas designed to handle larger context windows through a dedicated storage tier connected by Nvidia BlueField-4. "NAND flash is emerging as a more important tier in AI inference," he said.

ㆍAI stocks see surge in volatility... fortunes flip overnight on Nvidia moves ㆍLook beyond HBM to HBF... expansion gains momentum from Samsung to SanDisk

SanDisk's rise also appears to have been unexpected by the market. Even activist fund Elliott Management, which led the SanDisk spinoff from Western Digital, had sold its stake in September. Since then, SanDisk shares have risen more than fourfold.

Experts do not see this price rise as a short-term move. Berkeley Research and Goldman Sachs both picked SanDisk as a top buy recommendation through 2026, forecasting that memory chip shortages will persist as AI infrastructure expands. SanDisk will report quarterly results on Jan. 29 local time.