Micron Technology perpetual futures dropped approximately 6.5% in eight minutes over the October 17-18 weekend. The trigger was DeepSeek and its Flash model, which is pitched on doing more with less memory.
What moved the market
The pressure traces back to DeepSeek’s V4.1 Flash model, released on September 10, 2026. DeepSeek claimed it cuts KV-cache high-bandwidth memory (HBM) usage by 75% compared with the previous version.
A quick translation helps. The KV-cache is the model’s short-term memory. It is a running notepad of everything said so far, so the model does not reread the whole conversation before each word. That notepad usually sits in HBM, the expensive, ultra-fast memory stacked next to AI chips. Micron is one of the companies that makes it.
DeepSeek also claimed an 87.5% reduction in SSD requirements versus the prior version.
The V4.1 Flash model was announced around 06:10 UTC. It uses a 552B-parameter mixture-of-experts (MoE) design.
Then came a second nudge. On October 17, 2026, DeepSeek pushed a minor update that improved coding benchmarks. Pricing and the context window stayed the same.
A sector-wide headache
Micron was not alone. SanDisk and Western Digital both came under strain. In South Korea, Samsung and SK Hynix shares fell approximately 3% and 2%, respectively, on September 11, 2026, the day after the model’s debut.
As of mid-October 2026, the memory sector is still dealing with Chinese competition, including Chinese advances in DRAM, plus doubts about overall DRAM demand.
Why the perps market reacted first
A perpetual future is a derivative with no expiry date. Traders take leveraged long or short positions on an asset’s price, and those positions can stay open indefinitely. MU perps trade 24/7 across various platforms.
Open interest across MU perpetual venues exceeds several hundred million dollars, meaning a lot of money is parked in open bets on Micron’s price.
What this means
DeepSeek’s claimed 75% cut in KV-cache HBM usage challenges demand forecasting for HBM directly. If competitors match those gains, demand estimates for HBM and NAND products may need to be revised.
For long-term holders of Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, SanDisk, and Western Digital, they need to track DeepSeek’s release notes, Chinese DRAM progress, and whether other AI labs adopt similar memory-saving methods.
It is also worth watching whether DeepSeek’s efficiency claims hold up under independent testing. Benchmarks published by the developer are a starting point, not the final word.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.