Apple needs a good memory (chip)

The relationship between Apple and the White House has soured since Tim Cook presented that extremely memeable gold statue to President Trump in the Oval Office.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the White House is “not in favor of” Apple buying memory chips from China. That’s a problem for Apple, because the tech giant has been looking toward China to meet some of its memory chip demand amid a worldwide shortage. Shares edged 0.11% lower this afternoon.

A walk down memory lane: Silicon Valley’s frantic rush to build data centers faster than you can spell the word Gemini has created a huge shortage of memory chips. That’s spiked the cost of the technology critical to building AI infrastructure and a slew of consumer products—which is partly why Apple just raised prices on its flagship devices last month. One solution for Apple and other tech companies is to source chips from elsewhere—aka China.

Apple has reportedly been experimenting with memory chips from Chinese companies CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies to potentially use them to manufacture Chinese products, according to the WSJ. As of now, the US government requires companies to get a license in order to share product details with these two Chinese companies, which the US seems set to deny.

The apple of a chipmaker’s eye

Bad news for Apple is good news for domestic memory chip makers, which popped today: Sandisk jumped 8.88%, Western Digital gained 5.35%, Seagate rallied 2.19%, and Micron rose 4.13%. Sandisk in particular is having a great run lately: Shares popped 35% last week after management outlined the company’s long-term vision and projected that revenue will grow by double digits between 2028 and 2030.

Another bullish piece of news for chipmakers today came from Bloomberg, which reported that Anthropic’s Q2 revenue climbed more than 14 times higher year over year. Investors are surmising that much of that money will be spent on AI hardware, including chips.

Even Apple can’t dip these chips.—LB