Memory and storage chip companies surged on Monday, June 15, after the United States and Iran announced a peace agreement that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The rally didn’t come about because the AI trade suddenly changed; it came about because the single biggest threat to it just got removed
For companies like Micron Technology (MU), Western Digital (WDC), Seagate (STX), SanDisk (SNDK), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Arista Networks (ANET), a waterway they never directly touch turned out to matter enormously. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil consumption and 20.5 million barrels of oil per day ordinarily flow, had been effectively closed to commercial shipping since early March 2026, following the start of the U.S.-Iran conflict. The closure was not just an oil story.
Rising energy costs became the most acute problem for chip manufacturers, with analysts warning that the longer the conflict lasted, the more significant the second and third order impacts on component costs, vendor margins, and overall AI data center economics would become, according to CNBC report citing William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji. What the peace deal actually did to prices President Trump posted on Truth Social that he fully authorized the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the simultaneous removal of the U.S. naval blockade, with the formal signing of the deal scheduled for Friday in Geneva. Even if the strait fully opens then, analysts expect it will likely take months for the global energy crisis sparked by its closure to ease fully.