A year ago, SanDisk was a $36 stock, today $503 what changed?

A year ago, SanDisk was a $36 stock.

Today it is a $503 stock.

That is not a typo.

That is a 1,000%+ move in 12 months.

So what changed?

SanDisk did not “randomly moon.”

It became the cleanest pure play on a very specific bottleneck.

On Feb 24, 2025, SanDisk separated from Western Digital and began trading as an independent company on Nasdaq under SNDK.

One business. One focus. One story for Wall Street to price.

Then AI happened to storage.

Everyone talks about GPUs.

Almost nobody talks about the part that quietly becomes the choke point.

Data.

AI training and inference create a brutal storage problem.

Massive datasets. Constant writes. Checkpoints. Logs. Outputs.

That drives demand for enterprise SSDs and NAND flash.

At the same time, pricing turned.

In Q4 2025, contract prices for NAND and DRAM reportedly surged about 15% to 20% with AI infrastructure demand and tightening supply.

When demand rises and supply stays disciplined, the math gets violent fast.

Then the accelerants kicked in.

1/ The spinoff unlocked the “pure play” trade

Investors stopped valuing it as a complicated Western Digital segment.

They started valuing it as a direct proxy for a memory upcycle plus AI storage demand.

2/ Analysts followed the money

As data center demand climbed and pricing tightened, the sell side started chasing the move and raising targets on the AI storage narrative.

3/ Index inclusion poured gasoline on the fire

SanDisk was added to the S&P SmallCap 600 in Feb 2025.

Then it jumped to the S&P 500 effective Nov 28, 2025.

Index funds buy because they have to. That creates forced demand.

4/ Momentum became its own catalyst

Once a stock becomes the chart everyone screenshots, flows start driving flows.

Even the financial press started calling out repeated explosive days tied to NAND optimism and AI storage demand.

Now look at the scoreboard.

SanDisk trades around $503.

Up massively since the spin and since the market realized storage is part of the AI arms race.

Lesson for investors?

This was a perfect storm.

A spinoff that clarified the story.

A memory pricing upcycle.

AI turning storage into a bottleneck.

Index inclusion forcing buyers.

Just remember.

Memory is cyclical.

Vertical charts reward early conviction and punish late FOMO.