Kioxia, Sandisk to Invest More Than $31 Billion in Memory Chips — Update

By Kosaku Narioka

Kioxia Holdings and Sandisk plan to invest more than $31 billion in Japan to strengthen their joint venture and drive the large-scale supply of flash memory chips in the age of artificial intelligence.

These investments through 2032 will support the continuing buildout of production infrastructure in Japan, along with related technology, the companies said Thursday.

Kioxia also said it plans to build a new facility at its Kitakami plant in the northern Japanese prefecture of Iwate to expand flash memory production capacity. The company targets operations to begin in the fiscal year starting April 2029.

The announcement of large investments by Kioxia and Sandisk comes as worries have grown over dizzying spending on AI infrastructure, though Nvidia's strong quarterly earnings and revenue guidance on Wednesday helped soothe such concerns.

Earlier this month, SK Hynix said it planned to invest about $38 billion to expand semiconductor production capacity in South Korea, as it seeks to ramp up output to meet growing demand fueled by the AI boom.

Kioxia and Sandisk specialize in NAND flash memory, used for long-term data storage, such as keeping photos on a phone. DRAM, which provides temporary storage for faster data-processing in servers, PCs and other electronics, is the other major type of memory chip.

Kioxia said the flash memory market is expected to continue to expand significantly in the medium to long term, driven by agentic and other AI applications.

The Japanese company said the construction schedule and equipment investments for the new facility will be determined based on market trends.

The $31 billion of investments align with the Japanese government's economic policy goals and are contingent upon government support, Kioxia and Sandisk said.

The Kioxia-Sandisk partnership has helped drive decades of NAND flash memory innovation and invested more than $50 billion in Japan over the past 25 years, the companies said.

"Kioxia will continue to meet growing demand for high-capacity, high-performance, and power-efficient flash memory, which is essential to the growth of an AI-driven society," Chief Executive Hiroo Ota said.

Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 27, 2026 07:33 ET (11:33 GMT)