Jim Cramer said chip stocks are rising because companies lack the equipment needed to expand production

Jim Cramer says chip stocks are going up because companies can’t build new chips fast enough. Not because they don’t want to. They literally don’t have the tools.

“We don’t have enough equipment to expand production of these chips, and we can’t put it together fast enough,” Jim said on his CNBC segment Friday night.

Micron’s stock jumped 7.76% on Friday. Not a small move. The company makes memory and storage tech, especially for artificial intelligence. Its CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra, told Jim there’s no sign of things slowing down.

“AI driven-demand is accelerating. It is real. It is here, and we need more and more memory to address that demand,” Sanjay said. They just started building a 600,000-square-foot site in upstate New York. It’s part of their plan to spend $200 billion on new chip production in the U.S.

Micron, Seagate and others can’t keep up with AI orders

That massive site? It’s not saving anything tomorrow. It’s years away. And Jim pointed that out. The only reason this kind of construction is even happening is because of the CHIPS Act. That law gives U.S. chipmakers government support to build locally.

But laws don’t pour concrete. It’ll take time. That means the shortage isn’t getting fixed right away. And as long as demand stays hot, Jim says prices will just keep rising.

Besides Micron, Jim called out other chip stocks that are already up big. Western Digital, Seagate, Sandisk are all benefiting from this crunch. He also said the shortage didn’t show up out of nowhere. Last year, everyone thought there were too many chips. Now? Total reversal. Jim said only one company saw this coming: Nvidia.

“Only Nvidia really saw it coming,” Jim said. “They teamed up with the best of the best, Taiwan Semiconductor, to make all the high-end chips that are needed. There’s no bottleneck there. There’s no shortage, at least not in comparison to memory.”

Markets stay up as global chaos is mostly ignored

Even with everything going on around the world, stocks are still going up. The S&P 500 is higher. So is the Dow Jones, with a 3% gain this year. The Nasdaq is up 1.2%. Nobody’s pulling out of the market, even with Trump talking about military action or Greenland.

Anthony Esposito, who runs AscalonVI Capital, told CNBC that markets haven’t cared about geopolitical risk for a while now.

“Israel bombs Iran — the S&P 500 was down 1% overnight and closed down just 50bps. U.S. bombs Iran — almost no reaction,” he said. Venezuela and Greenland, he added, could even help U.S. markets because of energy, rare-earths and infrastructure.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 is up almost 4%, even while everyone’s guessing what Trump might try with Greenland. Over in Asia, the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index just hit a new high after jumping more than 5% this year. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi both hit records too.

One last thing. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on Trump’s tariffs. It hasn’t happened yet. But investors don’t seem to be waiting. They’ve already adjusted to whatever changes came out of the White House in 2025.

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