Sandisk (SNDK), Seagate (STX), WDC Stock Rise After Mizuho’s Bullish AI Memory Call

TLDR

• Mizuho raised Sandisk’s (SNDK) price target to $2,200 from $1,825, maintaining an Outperform rating
• Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) also received price target upgrades from Mizuho
• AI is driving a supply-demand imbalance in memory, with DRAM demand seen growing 27% y/y in 2026
• Google’s (GOOGL) TPU shipments could hit 35M+ in 2028, up from ~4.3M in 2026, boosting memory demand
• Broadcom (AVGO) AI revenue estimates raised to $122B for 2027 and $170B introduced for 2028

---

Mizuho has raised its price target on Sandisk (SNDK) to $2,200 from $1,825, citing AI as the main force pushing demand higher than supply in the memory market. The firm kept its Outperform rating on the stock.

The same bullish view extended to Seagate Technology (STX), where Mizuho lifted its target to $1,090 from $875, and Western Digital (WDC), raised to $685 from $550. All three stocks retained Outperform ratings.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, STX

Sandisk opened Monday at $1,982 and is up around 5.69% on the day following the news.

Analyst Vijay Rakesh and his team are projecting DRAM wafer starts rising 10% in 2026 and 6% in 2027, driven mostly by high-bandwidth memory (HBM) demand. They estimate DRAM demand growing 27% y/y in 2026 and 24% in 2027.

On the NAND side, eSSD is the key demand driver. Mizuho forecasts total NAND demand growing 18% y/y in both 2026 and 2027, while wafer starts are expected to dip 5% in 2026 before recovering 3% in 2027. No new supply is expected online until 2028.

Google TPU Shipments in Focus

Mizuho also hosted its quarterly AI ASIC roadmap call, and the numbers for Google’s Tensor Processing Units were eye-catching. The firm projects over 35 million TPU shipments from Google in 2028, up from roughly 4.3M in 2026 and around 2.4M in 2025.

That growth is tied to Google’s plans to scale TPU externally through partnerships with Anthropic and others. Mizuho says this figure is well above its prior estimate of around 7 million ASIC shipments for Broadcom, pointing to upside for the chip giant.

Broadcom AI Revenue Estimates Lifted

Broadcom (AVGO) could see 50 million total TPU shipments between 2026 and 2028. On top of that, Meta’s (META) MTIA v3/v4/v5 accelerators and OpenAI’s upcoming ASIC — where Broadcom is a key partner — add further tailwinds.

Mizuho raised its Broadcom AI revenue estimate for 2027 to $122B, up from a prior $120B, and introduced a 2028 estimate of $170B. TPU remains Broadcom’s flagship AI product in the firm’s view.

Rakesh’s team said investor concerns about ASIC versus GPU market share and competition from MediaTek are “overblown,” and recommended buying the AVGO pullback.

The team added that the upside scenario for TPU ASICs in 2028, alongside OpenAI, MTIA, and ARM-linked ASICs, is positive for both memory names like Micron (MU) and Sandisk, and storage names like Western Digital and Seagate.

Sandisk’s P/E ratio currently sits at 58.32x, compared to a historical median of 29.61x, reflecting the premium the market is placing on future growth. Insider activity over the past three months shows $8.9 million in selling, with no reported buying.