Kioxia and Western Digital Plan ¥5T Expansion to Secure AI Memory Supply
Kioxia and its joint venture partner SanDisk have announced a massive ¥5 trillion (over $31 billion USD) investment plan through 2032 to expand advanced NAND flash memory production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, which includes…
AsiaAI Publisher
·
August 28, 2026 ·
2 min read · Source: ITmedia NEWS
Semiconductors & Hardware
Kioxia and its joint venture partner SanDisk have announced a massive ¥5 trillion (over $31 billion USD) investment plan through 2032 to expand advanced NAND flash memory production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, which includes preparing for a third fabrication facility (K3) by FY2029. This aggressive expansion, highly contingent on receiving Japanese government subsidies, aims to secure the infrastructure necessary to meet skyrocketing global demand for high-capacity AI and data center storage.
For Western observers, this massive joint commitment underscores how critical the Kioxia-Western Digital (SanDisk) alliance remains to the global storage supply chain, proving that legacy joint ventures are still the primary vehicles for scaling hardware to meet the AI boom. It also highlights Japan’s aggressive use of industrial subsidies to position itself as the Western alliance’s premier, politically stable manufacturing hub for advanced memory.
