Micron’s customers have put up $22 billion in cash deposits and financial commitments to secure guaranteed memory supply through 2030, under contracts that require payment whether or not they take delivery. Fourteen of the first sixteen agreements lock in roughly $100 billion in minimum revenue. Micron’s own new capacity won’t ship until mid-2027 at the earliest, meaning buyers are financing a factory they won’t benefit from for years.

Take-or-pay memory contracts have become the price of admission to guaranteed AI memory supply, and the terms favor the seller more than most buyers seem to be pricing in. Micron disclosed that customers across data center, consumer, and automotive segments have committed $22 billion in cash deposits and related financial commitments under 16 strategic capacity agreements, according to The Globe and Mail’s coverage of CEO Sanjay Mehrotra’s comments. Fourteen of those sixteen deals add up to roughly $100 billion in contracted minimum revenue over their terms.

Micron’s CFO Mark Murphy has been precise about the structure: roughly $18 billion of the $22 billion is cash, the rest letters of credit, and none of it counts as prepaid revenue, since it returns to customers on a schedule weighted toward the back half of the contract term, according to Futurum’s analysis of the Q3 earnings call. Most agreements run five years, from calendar 2026 through late 2030, with automotive deals typically three years. Take-or-pay memory contracts require the customer to buy a set volume at agreed pricing regardless of whether they ultimately need it, and the biggest deals carry a price floor that holds for the full term.