Micron is pulling Crucial, its consumer products business – not because people aren’t buying it, but because shoveling the products directly into the insatiable maw of AI data centers is more profitable. The company announced today (via The Verge) that it will be winding down the sale of Crucial consumer products – think high-quality budget RAM and SSDs – at the end of February 2026.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” EVP and chief business officer of Micron Sumit Sadana said, “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
To quote Ronny Cox’s Dick Jones, the main corporate villain of the 1987 movie Robocop, “Good business is where you find it.”
Micron’s announcement is just further heartbreak for PC builders, especially those who have relied for years on Crucial parts’ quality and affordability to upgrade or assemble their computers. (The Crucial MX500 has been our go-to budget SSD for years, while the T500 is our favorite value SSD for PS5.) But Crucial may only be the first big casualty of the massive and growing memory demand of the AI industry, which has already lead to unpredictable catch-of-the-day style price swings in RAM, as PCWorld reported last month. And the pressure on components prices could reverberate across high-end gaming for years to come. For instance, rumors last month suggested that Microsoft will yet again raise prices on its Xbox Series X/S consoles – or that they could become unavailable altogether – due to the cost of RAM.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
