Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTHarsh Chauhan, The Motley FoolTue, June 23, 2026 at 8:43 PM GMT+2 5 min readMemory has emerged as one of the biggest bottlenecks in the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure ecosystem, creating a massive supply shortage and leading to a stunning jump in prices.AI chip designers have been packing in more high-bandwidth memory (HBM) into their chips, while AI data centers have been quickly cornering the available supply of storage-focused memory chips -- NAND flash -- so that they can store the huge amounts of data needed for AI training and inference. This isn't surprising, as AI processors are now capable of completing calculations before they can receive data from memory storage and other processing units.Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »And now, the growing adoption of agentic AI applications will further increase the demand for memory chips. That's because agentic AI applications involve solving multiple queries to complete a task autonomously, thereby creating the need for faster compute memory and more data. This is why market research firm TrendForce has substantially increased its revenue estimates for the memory industry for 2026 and 2027.That's great news for Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK). This AI stock has jumped by 7x so far in 2026, and the latest update from TrendForce suggests it still has multibagger potential. In fact, I won't be surprised to see Sandisk becoming one of the largest companies in the world by the end of 2027 by entering the $1 trillion market cap club.Let's see why that's possible.Image source: The Motley Fool.Earlier this year, TrendForce noted that the NAND flash market's revenue will jump by 112% to $147.3 billion in 2026. The firm was anticipating a much slower increase of 19% in NAND flash revenue to $175.7 billion in 2027. However, it has now significantly increased those estimates.The growing adoption of agentic AI applications has encouraged TrendForce to raise its 2026 NAND flash revenue estimate to $270.6 billion, suggesting a massive increase of 280.7% over last year. What's more, it expects another 40% increase in the NAND flash industry's revenue in 2027 to just over $379 billion. The firm notes that demand for flash-based high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) will increase due to the growth in AI inference, training, and agentic workloads.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info