Micron Invests $9.3 Billion in Japan HBM Capacity as Stock Sheds 19% in a Week

Micron breaks ground on HBM chip factory in Japan with $3.3B subsidies, but shares plunge 19% in weekly sell-off amid lawsuit and CEO stock sales.

The ground broke on Micron Technology’s latest chip factory in Higashi-Hiroshima on July 4, 2026, with Japan pledging up to $3.3 billion in subsidies for the $9.3 billion project. The facility will produce High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips, the crucial component powering AI processors, with first deliveries expected by summer 2028. Yet even as Micron expands its global footprint to meet seemingly insatiable demand, shareholders have endured one of the stock’s worst weeks in recent memory.

Shares of Micron closed at 815.50 euros (approximately $873) on Tuesday, a 5.39% single-day loss that deepened the weekly rout to 19.56%. The pullback leaves the stock 26.12% below its all-time high of 1,103.80 euros reached on June 25 — a dizzying reversal for a company that just posted a record quarter. The sell-off, however, appears driven less by operational trouble than by a confluence of technical and sentiment-related factors.

Catalysts for the Correction

Late June brought a class-action lawsuit against Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, alleging coordinated price-fixing through artificial production cuts on certain memory chips. Around the same time, regulatory filings revealed that CEO Sanjay Mehrotra had sold over $45 million worth of Micron stock. Those disclosures, combined with a sector-wide rotation away from AI winners, proved enough for traders to lock in profits after an extraordinary rally — the stock still trades 696.85% higher over the past twelve months and has gained 203.16% year-to-date.

The jolt was not prompted by deteriorating fundamentals. Just a week earlier, Micron had surged following its fiscal third-quarter report, which showed revenue of $41.46 billion and adjusted net income of $28.86 billion, with gross margin around 84.9%. The company guided fourth-quarter revenue to roughly $50 billion and gross margin toward 86%. Management also secured forward contracts worth over $100 billion, with Mehrotra stating there is “no line of sight” to supply catching demand before 2028. HBM4 chips are already shipping in volume to key customers, and HBM4E is in development for mass production in 2027.

A Global Production Blitz

The Japan investment is just one piece of an aggressive capacity expansion. Micron is building two advanced fabrication plants in Idaho and planning up to four more in New York, aiming to bring 40% of its DRAM output back to the United States. A new wafer fab in Singapore opened in January 2026, and the company acquired Powerchip’s Tongluo-P5 facility in Taiwan in March. These moves are designed to prevent the supply bottlenecks that have plagued the memory market and to secure Micron’s position as an HBM leader, even as competitor SK Hynix dominates the segment with an estimated 60% market share.

SK Hynix, meanwhile, is preparing to list American Depositary Receipts on the Nasdaq as early as July 10, a move that could pull capital away from Micron. Capacity expansions by Samsung and SK Hynix also threaten to cool pricing once supply does catch up, though analysts expect the current demand surge to persist for several more quarters.

Technical Picture and Market Sentiment

From a chart perspective, Micron shares sit 4.77% above their 50-day moving average of 778.39 euros but a staggering 104.67% above the 200-day average of 398.45 euros — a reflection of how parabolic the run had become. The relative strength index (RSI) stands at about 45.5, hovering in neutral territory after weeks of extreme readings. Annualized 30-day volatility is 111.7%, underscoring that turbulence is likely to continue.

Despite the weekly hit, the long-term thesis remains intact. The 52-week low of 90.64 euros, set in August 2025, seems distant history; the stock still trades nearly eight times that level even after the correction. Analysts’ consensus price target of 1,302 euros implies roughly 60% upside from current prices. The sell-off, in other words, looks more like a recalibration of how much of Micron’s AI boom was already priced in than a verdict on the company’s ability to execute. With a $100 billion order book and a new Japanese factory breaking ground, the fundamental story is far from over.