Kioxia and Western Digital Plan a ¥5T NAND Expansion to Meet AI Storage Demand
Joint venture partners Kioxia and Western Digital's SanDisk have announced a massive ¥5 trillion ($31 billion) investment through 2032 to boost advanced NAND flash memory production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants in Japan.
AsiaAI Publisher
·
August 29, 2026 ·
2 min read · Source: ITmedia AI+
Semiconductors & Hardware
Joint venture partners Kioxia and Western Digital’s SanDisk have announced a massive ¥5 trillion ($31 billion) investment through 2032 to boost advanced NAND flash memory production at their Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants in Japan. This long-term expansion, contingent on government subsidies, is designed to meet the soaring global demand for AI data storage and secure Japan’s position in the international semiconductor race against rivals in the US, China, and South Korea.
For Western readers, this massive commitment signals that the AI hardware boom extends far beyond logic chips like Nvidia’s GPUs to critical storage infrastructure. It also showcases how Western Digital is leveraging Japan’s generous industrial subsidies to remain competitive against South Korean and Chinese memory giants.
