Micron (MU 4.11%) stock is moving higher in Friday's trading. The memory chip and storage solutions company's share price was up 4.1% as of 3:45 p.m. ET. The stock had climbed as high as 5.3% earlier in the day's trading.

Micron is seeing bullish momentum today following news that Meta Platforms is gearing up for a big investment in humanoid robots. Meta's big robotics play could wind up being a significant performance driver for the memory specialist.

Micron stock climbs on Meta's robotics push

Bloomberg published a report today stating that Meta plans to make a big play in the humanoid-robot space. Nvidia uses Micron's memory chips as components in its high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) for data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Nvidia's advanced GPUs are the key hardware powering bleeding-edge AI software. Meta Platforms is also estimated to be Nvidia's second-largest customer. With Meta seemingly setting out on a new tech venture that will require substantial new computational resources, Micron could have a major new demand catalyst on the horizon.

What comes next for Micron?

The rise of robotics looks to be a substantial long-term performance catalyst for Micron. Meta's robots will almost certainly include substantial amounts of onboard computing hardware, but much of the key AI features will likely be run through cloud computing that uses Nvidia's GPUs. It's also possible that the company's robots could wind up making use of Micron's storage and memory chip solutions for onboard hardware.

With today's gains, Micron stock is now up approximately 22.5% over the last year. On the other hand, the company's share price is still down roughly 35% from the high that it reached earlier this year.

For investors looking for pick-and-shovel plays in the AI and robotics spaces, Micron continues to look like a smart long-term investment.