Intel's $9B NAND exit looks costly as Micron tops $1 trillion

Intel sold its NAND memory and storage business to SK Hynix for about $9 billion in a 2020 deal that closed in stages through March 2025. Micron's market value has since climbed to roughly $1.05 trillion—more than twice Intel's ~$464 billion—largely because AI data centers drove a memory boom Intel no longer participates in directly.

Key Takeaways

• Intel agreed in October 2020 to sell its NAND, SSD, and Dalian factory assets to SK Hynix—not rival Micron—for $9 billion total.
• Micron's ~$1.05 trillion valuation reflects AI-driven DRAM and high-bandwidth memory demand, not the NAND business Intel exited.
• Intel redirected focus to Intel Foundry, which grew 31% in Q2 2026 but still posted a $2.1 billion operating loss.
• Intel shares traded between $23.68 and $142.35 over the past year; the stock now prices a foundry turnaround more than current earnings.
• External customers accounted for only about $293 million of Intel Foundry's $5.8 billion Q2 revenue—roughly 5%.

Why did Intel sell its NAND business for $9 billion?

In October 2020, Intel agreed to sell its NAND memory and storage operations to SK Hynix for $9 billion. The package included solid-state drives, NAND components and wafers, and a factory in Dalian, China.

The deal closed in two steps. SK Hynix paid $7.0 billion at the end of 2021, taking the drive business and Dalian factory and creating subsidiary Solidigm. On March 27, 2025, Intel transferred remaining NAND technology, intellectual property, and staff, collecting about $1.9 billion net of adjustments.

Intel said it would steer proceeds toward long-term priorities including artificial intelligence, 5G networking, and the intelligent edge. What it built instead was manufacturing capacity through Intel Foundry.

Was Intel's NAND exit the wrong bet?

For a time, the exit looked smart. Memory prices collapsed in 2022 and 2023, and Micron posted a $5.83 billion net loss in fiscal 2023 as revenue nearly halved. Intel had already collected $7.0 billion before the worst of the downturn.

Then AI rewired the industry's economics. Data centers built for AI need enormous memory, and prices surged as demand outran supply. SK Hynix's second-quarter revenue rose 257% year over year to 79.3 trillion won, with a record 76% operating margin.

The 2020 logic was defensible—NAND was a capital-intensive commodity, and Intel needed to fix core manufacturing. But Intel exited the corner of the industry where AI created scarcity and doubled down on a foundry that still loses money every quarter. On today's numbers, the exit looks like the more expensive decision, though memory's cyclical nature means the gap could narrow again.

Why is Micron worth more than twice Intel today?

Micron's trillion-dollar valuation mostly reflects DRAM and high-bandwidth memory feeding AI data centers—businesses Intel was not selling in 2020. The headline comparison is not asset for asset; it measures what happened to the memory industry Intel left versus the manufacturing bet Intel stayed in.

Micron's trailing-12-month revenue rose 167%, and it earned more than $44 per share over that period. After that run, its stock trades at about 6 times next year's expected earnings—the market treating results as a cyclical peak. Intel, by comparison, costs about 43 times forward earnings, pricing a promise rather than proven profitability.

Can Intel Foundry justify the stock price?

Intel Foundry grew segment revenue 31% year over year to $5.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026, but posted a $2.1 billion operating loss. Just $293 million of that revenue came from external customers—roughly 5%. Nearly everything else is Intel buying wafers from itself.

Overall, Intel's total revenue rose 25% to $16.1 billion in Q2—its fastest growth in years—but profitability at the foundry has not arrived. Management is raising 2026 capital spending above $20 billion, with 2027 set significantly higher. Intel raised about $23 billion earlier in August 2026, selling new shares at $95 apiece.

Within the past year, Intel shares swung from $23.68 to $142.35 and now sit near $87—about 39% below the peak. The bottom priced a broken chipmaker; the top priced a successful foundry that arguably does not exist yet at profitable scale. For more context on semiconductor shifts, see our Future Tech & AI Wonders coverage. Detailed financial analysis is available from Yahoo Finance.