The 67-year-old chairman, president and CEO now has an estimated net worth of US$1.2 billion after Micron shares surged to record levels, according to Forbes.

Micron's stock has risen 194% this year and 863% over the past 12 months as demand for memory chips used in AI servers continues to grow. The company recently became the third memory-chip maker to surpass a $1 trillion market capitalization, following Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

"The need for pure memory has increased rapidly over very short periods of time, and clearly, Micron sits at the center of it," Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, told Reuters, adding that Micron's entry into the $1 trillion club underscores the huge demand for hardware needed to power AI data centers.

U.S. chip maker Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. Photo courtesy of Micron

Born in Kapur, India, Mehrotra moved to the U.S. at age 18 to study at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1988, he co-founded SanDisk with Eli Harari and Jack Yuan. The company pioneered flash-memory storage technology, went public in 1995 and was acquired by Western Digital for about $16 billion in 2016.

Mehrotra became Micron's CEO the following year, when the company's stock traded at around $30 per share. Since then, Micron shares have gained roughly 3,000%, increasing the value of stock awards he received as part of his compensation package.

The AI boom has reshaped the memory-chip industry, which was previously known for sharp cycles of oversupply and weak demand. Memory chips are critical for supplying data to processors such as Nvidia's graphics processing units, which are used to train and run AI models including ChatGPT and Claude.

Micron, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dominate the global market for advanced memory chips, and rising AI investment has boosted shareholder wealth across the sector.

Four members of the Lee family, which controls Samsung, are now South Korea's four richest people. Executive chairman Jay Y. Lee leads the group with a net worth that has more than doubled to nearly $35 billion in less than six months.

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, whose conglomerate controls SK Hynix, has also benefited from the rally. His fortune has risen to $5.6 billion, more than triple his estimated $1.7 billion net worth in January.