The Kaipher Editorial Team 
Morgan Stanley elevated SanDisk to “Top Pick” status Thursday, raising its price target to $96 from $70 as artificial intelligence applications fuel unprecedented demand for NAND flash storage. The investment bank maintained its Overweight rating while shares surged 11.67% to $82.55 following the upgrade, reflecting growing confidence in the memory maker’s strategic position within the AI infrastructure buildout (Yahoo Finance).
The analyst upgrade underscores Morgan Stanley’s increasingly bullish outlook on the NAND memory sector, driven by what the bank describes as a fundamental shift from AI model training to AI inference applications. This transition demands high-capacity, cost-effective storage solutions where NAND flash technology provides distinct advantages over traditional alternatives. The firm projects AI-specific NAND chips will represent 34% of global sales by 2029, adding an incremental $29 billion to the total addressable market and positioning SanDisk to capture significant market share.
Enterprise Orders Signal Massive Infrastructure Investment Wave
Morgan Stanley’s assessment centers on reports of substantial hyperscaler orders for NAND enterprise solid-state drives totaling “tens of exabytes,” suggesting robust near-term demand that could strain existing supply chains. The bank anticipates the total NAND market will reach 250 to 300 exabytes for calendar year 2025, potentially driving pricing higher as supply constraints emerge across the industry.
Quad-Level Cell (QLC) solid-state drives have emerged as the “optimal solution” for AI inference workloads due to their emphasis on high capacity and cost-effectiveness over pure speed, outperforming traditional hard disk drives in enterprise deployments. This technological advantage positions SanDisk’s product portfolio to benefit directly from the infrastructure requirements of large-scale AI deployment (AinVest).
Strong Recovery Trajectory and Innovation Pipeline
SanDisk, which completed its strategic spinoff from Western Digital in February 2025, reported revenues of $1.9 billion in its final fiscal quarter, representing a 7.9% year-over-year increase that validates the company’s independent growth strategy. The memory manufacturer has implemented price increases exceeding 10% starting in April 2025, citing the transition to a supply-constrained market environment.
The company’s shares have rallied approximately 132% year-to-date, reflecting investor optimism about AI-driven storage transformation. SanDisk is advancing development of High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) technology that combines 3D NAND and high-bandwidth memory characteristics specifically optimized for AI inference workloads, with first commercial samples expected in the second half of 2026. Morgan Stanley identified SanDisk, alongside Samsung Electronics and Kioxia, as the “primary beneficiaries” of this NAND secular cycle, warning that companies seeking to overcome capacity limitations have already initiated large-scale supplier negotiations that could create chip shortages in late 2026 (Yahoo Finance UK).
