Stocks — 1-year review
SNDK vs. MU: who performed better over the last year?
Two memory-chip companies caught up in the same AI-driven storage boom, one $10,000 starting line. Both delivered extraordinary returns — but one pulled meaningfully ahead of the other.
SanDisk (SNDK)
$253,829
+2,438.3%
Micron (MU)
$77,384
+673.8%
$10,000 in SanDisk on September 5, 2025 would have grown to $253,829 by September 4, 2026 — a 2,438.3% return. The same $10,000 in Micron over the identical year would have grown to $77,384 — a 673.8% return. Both are extreme outcomes for a single year, but SanDisk’s gain is roughly 3.6 times larger than Micron’s.
| Starting price | Ending price | 1-yr return | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SNDK | $68.55 | $1,740.00 | +2,438.3% |
| MU | $131.37 | $1,016.59 | +673.8% |
A historic year for memory chips
Both companies make memory and storage chips, and both benefited from the same underlying story over this period: surging demand for memory tied to AI infrastructure buildouts. SanDisk, spun off from Western Digital in February 2025, is the newer and smaller of the two names — its shorter track record and smaller size likely made its price more sensitive to that same demand surge than the larger, more established Micron.
Micron’s steadier — though still enormous — 673.8% return reflects a similar tailwind acting on a company with a longer history, more diversified product lines, and a larger existing market capitalization to grow from.
Past performance isn’t a preview
A single year like this one is a poor basis for predicting the next one. Memory-chip demand is historically cyclical, and both companies have posted sharp drawdowns in past cycles once demand cooled. SanDisk in particular has less than two years of trading history as an independent company, which means there simply isn’t a long enough track record yet to know how it behaves across a full cycle, let alone across a downturn.
Try your own comparison
Pick any two tickers and any timeframe to see how they actually compare, using the same real closing-price data behind the numbers above.
Or just run the numbers on one company alone.
Figures shown reflect historical closing prices only and exclude dividends, fees, taxes, and reinvestment. Past performance does not guarantee future results. This article is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial or investment advice.