Kioxia Ships Samples of Newest Flash Memory for AI Data Centers

Kioxia Holdings Corp. has started shipping samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to AI data center operators, seeking to gain ground in the lucrative business against rivals.

The Tokyo-based chipmaker’s latest high-memory density 3D flash memory chips are designed to better meet AI data center needs for more storage density, data transmitting speeds and power efficiency.

Kioxia’s newest offering will be used in the company’s solid-state drives for data centers and will be made at a new facility at its Kitakami plant in Iwate prefecture, northern Japan, the company said in a release Friday. The 332-layer chips pack more data into silicon, it said.

The new facility will help Kioxia boost output capacity to meet AI service providers’ runaway demand for data storage. The company will boost production of both low-cost 9th-generation bit-cost scalable chips alongside its 10th-generation offerings there, it said. Kioxia competes with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. as well as Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc., to supply flash memory used in data center and smartphone storage.

The memory chip crunch has helped the former unit of Toshiba Corp. surpass Toyota Motor Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp. to become Japan’s biggest company in terms of the market value. But its stock price moves have been volatile as concerns remain over the sustainability of surging memory prices as Kioxia and its peers ratchet up supply.