Goldman Sachs Says Sandisk's High Bandwidth Flash Could Save Cloud Giants as Much as Several Hundred Billion...

Goldman Sachs says Sandisk's ($SNDK) next chip, High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), could save cloud giants as much as several hundred billion dollars. In an Oct. 12 note, analyst James Schneider wrote that high-performance NAND "could help crumble the AI 'memory wall'" while driving meaningful capex savings. Goldman rates Sandisk a Buy with a $2,200 price target.
Sandisk and SK Hynix ($SKHY) are developing HBF, which stacks flash beside the processor. Citing Sandisk, Goldman says four processors with HBF could match the output of eight without it, cutting the cost of answering requests by about 30%. In its bull case, half of the AI chips shipped in late 2028 would carry HBF, using nearly 9% of flash factory capacity while making up under 4% of global flash output. Goldman's bull case puts the HBF market near $150 billion.
Goldman favors Sandisk and SK Hynix for their HBF lead and rates Micron ($MU) Neutral. It flags risks: HBF responds more slowly than the memory it supports, wears out under heavy writing and runs hot. Commercial samples are not expected until 2027, and Kioxia and Samsung Electronics are pursuing rival designs.
Sandisk's total revenue jumped 372% to $8.97 billion in the quarter ended July 3, while consumer revenue fell 5% to $556 million. Sandisk carries a consensus Buy rating from 25 analysts with an average price target of $2,173, according to StockAnalysis. The shares fell about 6% on Oct. 12 and are still up roughly 800% over the past year.
IDC expects memory prices to keep rising until at least 2028 and the average smartphone price to jump 27.6% this year to $581.