The brief
- AI data centres drive a flash boom: on 12 June 2026 Kioxia's market value passed Toyota's, making it Japan's most valuable listed company.
- BiCS FLASH 10, with 332 layers, began sampling and production at Kitakami Fab2 in July 2026.
- Fabs are run jointly with SanDisk, a partnership extended to December 2034.
Technical approach
Stacking
Memory cells built upward
3D NAND stacks hundreds of layers of memory cells in vertical strings, so capacity grows without shrinking each cell.
CBA
Logic and memory on separate wafers
The control circuits and the memory array are made on two wafers, each with its best process, then bonded face to face.
Two tracks
Cheaper and bigger generations in parallel
It develops a lower-cost generation reusing tools alongside a top-end one with more layers, to match demand and capital spend.
Products
Chips and finished SSDs
Kioxia sells raw flash and its own SSDs, such as the PCIe 6.0 CM10 for data centres built on BiCS FLASH 10.
