Perpetual futures for Micron Technology fell by approximately 6.5% within an eight-minute window during the weekend of October 17-18, 2026. This market movement followed updates from the Chinese AI laboratory DeepSeek regarding its Flash model.
DeepSeek released the V4.1 Flash model on September 10, 2026. The developer claims this model reduces KV-cache high-bandwidth memory usage by 75% and SSD requirements by 87.5% compared to its predecessor. The model utilizes a 552B-parameter mixture-of-experts architecture.
Following the initial release, DeepSeek introduced a minor update on October 17, 2026, which improved coding benchmarks. The market reaction extended beyond Micron, as shares of Samsung and SK Hynix declined by approximately 3% and 2% respectively on September 11, 2026.
Open interest in Micron perpetual futures currently exceeds several hundred million dollars. Analysts suggest that if the efficiency gains claimed by DeepSeek are adopted by other AI developers, demand forecasts for HBM and NAND memory products may require downward revisions.
