Kioxia Holdings and SanDisk jointly announced plans to invest more than ¥5 trillion in Japan over the next 6 years. They plan to build a third fabrication building at the Kitakami site with an investment of ¥1.8 trillion, while the Yokkaichi plant will continue to produce chips for consumer and home-appliance applications. They also plan to apply for government subsidies.
Kioxia Holdings and SanDisk announced plans to jointly invest more than ¥5 trillion in Japan over the next 6 years to expand memory-chip production capacity. The funds will be used to build infrastructure and upgrade technology at the Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, with ¥1.8 trillion earmarked for construction of a third fabrication building at the Kitakami site.
The new fabrication building at the Kitakami plant (Fab3) will be built jointly with SanDisk, with the aim of starting mass production of high-end NAND chips for AI data centers. The companies plan to leverage the Kitakami site's advanced technology and productivity to meet rapidly growing data-center demand.
Mass production of 10th-generation 3D flash memory began in July this year at the Kitakami site's second fabrication building (K2), and the transition from the previous generation, completed in September 2025, is under way. The new fabrication-building plan is reportedly aimed at securing long-term contracts and ensuring stable supply, building on K2's track record.
In the market, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are increasing production, while Kioxia aims to narrow the gap with its South Korean rivals in the NAND market for data centers. According to Counterpoint Research, market shares in the second quarter of 2026 were approximately 25% for Samsung, 22% for SK hynix and 14% for Kioxia, leaving a gap of approximately 11 percentage points.