Micron Pulls Crucial From Consumer Market To Feed The Insatiable AI Beast
Micron announced it is winding down the sale of its Crucial-branded memory and storage products to consumers after nearly three decades, marking the end of a remarkable era that has seen numerous other OGs fall by the wayside, including BFG, EVGA, OCZ, Hypersonic (at one time the parent company of OCZ), and others. And folks, on a personal level, this one stings.
Some of my earliest reviews when I was just getting into tech journalism were of Crucial memory products, including Ballistix memory, a sub-brand that was retired in 2022, and a 10th anniversary 2GB DDR2-667 (PC2-5300) memory kit released back in 2006. It was a different landscape back then, and while there have been many shifts in the past three decades, Crucial managed to stick around. Until now.
"The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. 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," said Sumit Sadana, EVP and Chief Business Officer at Micron Technology.
"Thanks to a passionate community of consumers, the Crucial brand has become synonymous with technical leadership, quality and reliability of leading-edge memory and storage products. We would like to thank our millions of customers, hundreds of partners and all of the Micron team members who have supported the Crucial journey for the last 29 years," Sadana added.
In other words, Micron is following the money trail, and at present it's being paved by AI, concerns of a bubble be damned. The question is, will this trigger a domino effect that will see other players exit stage left? That's hard to answer, though either way, the AI arms race is affecting the consumer market in more ways than just seeing another OG fall by the wayside.
For example, PC memory prices are skyrocketing. Just look at the various DDR5 price tracking charts at PCPartPicker that show massive spikes across the board in recent weeks. While rounding up Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, we had to skip the memory category as there just weren't any good values out there, just grossly inflated prices.
We've seen this before to some extent with the cryptocurrency mining craze that caused a shortage of GPUs. And yes, we made it to the other side, but this admittedly feels different. The AI arms race is afoot and the battlefield is vast with companies both big (Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Google, and the list goes on) and small.
"This decision reflects Micron’s commitment to its ongoing portfolio transformation and the resulting alignment of its business to secular, profitable growth vectors in memory and storage. By concentrating on core enterprise and commercial segments, Micron aims to improve long-term business performance and create value for strategic customers as well as stakeholders," Micron says.
Today, Micron shared some news that comes with a heavy heart: we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down the Crucial consumer business. This means that sales of Crucial-branded products through retailers, e-tailers, and distributors worldwide will gradually come to an end.… pic.twitter.com/KlW6B40BHO
— Crucial Memory (@CrucialMemory) December 3, 2025
The Crucial team also weighed in on the matter in an emotional post on X, saying that the news came from Micron "with a heavy heart." According to the post, Crucial-brand consumer products will continue to ship until the end of February 2026, and then the party is over.
For existing customers, Micron ensures that warranty service and support will remain intact, so there's your silver lining.
"While this chapter is closing, Micron will continue to serve commercial customers globally with Micron-branded enterprise products.
Thank you - for 29 amazing years of trust, collaboration, and shared success. Crucial wouldn’t have been what it was without you," Crucial stated on X.
So long, Crucial, and thanks for the ride.
