Micron Technology, Inc. was founded in 1978 by four friends in the basement of a dentist's office. The company was focused on making DRAM memory chips and began work on its first fabrication plant in 1981. Micron Technology came out with its first product a few years later and made history with the world's smallest DRAM microchip. By 1994 the company had earned a spot on the Fortune 500 and soon grew to be a leader in the microchip industry. Micron Technology went public in 1984 as well and is headquartered in Boise, Idaho.
Among Micron’s many achievements are the first 1-gigabyte DRAM product in 1987 and the shipping of the first 2-gigabyte NAND product in 2004. Among the latest innovations is the DDR5. The DDR5 is the next generation of DRAM chip for the server market and it can provide an 85% increase in the memory performance.
Today, Micron Technologies designs, manufactures, and sells memory and storage-focused microchip products worldwide. Its chips provide not only the power to store information but the foundation for new technologies like AI and 5G. Micron is the 4th largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world with revenue topping $27 billion in 2022. The company is ranked 127th on the Fortune 500 list and counts more than 50,000 patents and growing in the field of semiconductor manufacturing and storage solutions. The company operates in 17 countries with 11 manufacturing sites and employs more than 45,000 people.
The company operates through four segments that include Compute and Networking, Mobile, Storage, and Embedded. These solutions are marketed under the Micron and Crucial brands, as well as through private labels. In regard to the memory chip market, Micron Technologies is the only company offering all three types of memory storage products giving it the broadest portfolio and most experience and seamless interfaces.
The company manufactures memory and storage technologies including DRAM, NAND, and NOR microchips. The DRAM products are dynamic random access memory semiconductor devices with low latency that provide high-speed data retrieval. The NAND products are non-volatile and re-writeable semiconductor storage devices The NOR memory products are non-volatile re-writeable semiconductor memory devices that provide fast read speeds.
Micron Technologies memory products are in demand by industries ranging from the cloud server to enterprise, client, graphics, and networking markets, as well as for smartphone and other mobile-device markets including EVs and self-driving cars.
Among the more visible of Micron Technologies products are its line of SSDs and component-level solutions for the enterprise and cloud, client, and consumer storage markets. Often seen in movies and TV, these small-sized memory storage and transport devices can be as small as a key fob.