Kioxia Holdings has started shipping samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to artificial-intelligence data center operators, seeking to gain ground in the lucrative business against rivals.
The Tokyo-based chipmaker’s latest high-density 3D flash memory chips aim to better meet AI data center needs with better efficiency and transmission speeds. The 332-layer 10th-generation chips pack more data into silicon and can store 59% more data compared with its previous flagship 8th-generation chip, the company said Friday.
Production will take place at the company’s second manufacturing facility at its Kitakami plant in Iwate Prefecture, which began operating in September last year. Kioxia’s shares reversed double-digit percentage losses to rise 8.9% Friday morning in Tokyo.
The flash memory market will expand even further with the rise of AI agents and the use of AI to operate robots and other machines, Kioxia Chief Executive Officer Hiroo Ota said at a media event. “We will firmly respond to the market’s growth,” he said.
The new product, which will be used in solid-state drives, is key for Kioxia’s bid to capitalize on soaring demand for AI data center storage and lower its reliance on products geared for smartphone manufacturers such as Apple. As in the past, it seeks to break the memory sector’s brutal boom-and-bust cycles with technological breakthroughs to keep future price declines at bay.
The company’s share in the NAND flash memory market for data centers trails South Korean companies, which can bundle storage chips with the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips they supply.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics held 40% and SK Hynix had 30% of the data-center flash market last year, helped by their sales channels developed by their HBM operations, according to Omdia analyst Akira Minamikawa. Kioxia had 10%, he estimated.
“Kioxia’s NAND chips are highly superior to their rivals’ in terms of data processing speed, which is what’s most important for U.S. hyperscalers,” Minamikawa said. “The newest 10th generation chips are a big advance on that front, making them very competitive.”
The memory chip crunch has helped boost shares of the former unit of Toshiba up more than 680% this year to become Japan’s biggest company in terms of the market value. But its stock has been volatile as concerns persist over the strength of the AI rush and whether memory price rises are sustainable as Kioxia and its peers ratchet up supply.