Sandisk stock drops 5% as AI storage jitters outweigh a Mizuho upgrade
Shares of the memory maker slid on mixed economic signals and reported OpenAI training pauses, even as Mizuho lifted its price target to $2,050
Sandisk shares fell between 4.9% and 5.8% on Thursday, October 8, 2026, closing around $1,609. The stock was down hard on the same day an analyst raised its price target.
What happened to Sandisk stock
Trading in Sandisk (ticker: SNDK) was heavy. Volume reached approximately 7 to 9 million shares, and the stock touched a session low near $1,584 before settling.
The drop came despite a vote of confidence from Mizuho. The firm kept its Outperform rating and raised its price target from $1,875 to $2,050.
The pressure was not Sandisk-specific. Memory and storage companies broadly sold off, and peers such as Micron showed similar weakness.
Two forces drove the selling. The first was a batch of mixed economic signals that left investors unsure about the broader backdrop. The second was uncertainty about how fast AI infrastructure buildouts will keep moving.
That uncertainty has been amplified by reported pauses in OpenAI’s model training since late September. Training large AI models eats enormous amounts of data, and that data has to live somewhere. If one of the industry’s biggest builders is reportedly slowing training, storage investors start asking how much demand is really in the pipeline.
Sandisk’s market capitalization sat at approximately $230 to $243 billion during the downturn.
AI, tech, and the markets they move—in one daily briefing.
Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy.
How Sandisk got here
Sandisk’s stock had surged more than 1,100% over the trailing 12 months through early October 2026. That run was fueled by AI data-center demand. Hyperscalers and AI labs need vast amounts of flash storage to hold training data, model checkpoints and inference workloads, and Sandisk was positioned right in the path of that spending.
The company posted substantial revenue and margin growth in recent quarters on the back of that demand.
What this means for investors
Mizuho’s target of $2,050 sits well above where the stock closed, signaling the firm still sees significant upside as AI storage needs grow.
The fact that Micron moved in the same direction suggests investors are treating this as a sector-wide reassessment rather than a verdict on Sandisk alone.
Sandisk is scheduled to release its fiscal Q1 2027 results on October 29, 2026. Strong numbers and confident guidance about AI customer orders could restore some of the lost confidence. Soft guidance or signs of slowing orders could give the bears more ammunition.
Investors will likely watch commentary on data-center demand most closely, especially any discussion of whether large AI customers are adjusting purchase plans. Margin trends will also be scrutinized, since pricing power in memory tends to erode first when demand softens.
The heavy volume on Thursday is worth noting. Large share counts changing hands on a down day often indicate institutional repositioning rather than casual retail selling.