Mehrotra was born in Kanpur, India, in 1958, and his family moved to New Delhi when he was ten. He began at BITS Pilani, then moved to the United States at 18 to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Over his career he has also held engineering and management jobs at Integrated Device Technology, SEEQ Technology, Intel and Atmel.
In 1988 he co-founded SanDisk, a flash-memory company, and worked through its ranks, from director of memory design and product engineering to executive vice president and chief operating officer. SanDisk went public in 1995. Mehrotra became president and chief executive in 2011 and ran the company until Western Digital bought it in 2016, for around $16 billion according to Forbes. He holds more than 70 patents, and the National Academy of Engineering elected him in 2022 for memory designs that enabled multilevel cell NAND flash products.
Micron named Mehrotra chief executive after Mark Durcan announced his retirement in February 2017, and he took over on May 8, 2017, when the stock traded around $30. AI demand has since driven Micron past a $1 trillion market value, which it topped in May 2026. He chaired the Semiconductor Industry Association in 2019, and as of 2024 he sat on the boards of Micron, CDW and the association. Company filings list him as president and CEO.
Mehrotra's recent message has been scarcity. On Micron's September 30 call he said most of its calendar-2027 output is already sold, that demand will exceed supply in 2027 and 2028, and that Micron has "no line of sight" to when the two balance. He said customer commitments had "increased to $32 billion, the vast majority of which are cash deposits", up from $22 billion in June. He has also said a humanoid robot needs more than 200GB of memory.
Sources · written 16 October 2026
