Kioxia: 332-Layer NAND Flash Sampling This Summer, Targets Over 60% Revenue from Data Centers

Kioxia recently unveiled its new growth strategy for the "AI Inference Era" at an investor day event, announcing several major financial and technological plans.

Financials and Shareholder Returns

Kioxia announced its first-ever dividend policy since going public (a progressive dividend) and plans to evaluate shareholder returns over the coming years based on accumulated free cash flow surpluses. Thanks to its strong financial performance, the company expects to achieve a net cash position in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026.

Strategic Focus and Capital Investment

To seize opportunities in the AI infrastructure market, Kioxia is shifting its strategic focus toward AI infrastructure while maintaining a solid business foundation in the smartphone and PC sectors. The company aims to increase the revenue contribution from this segment to over 60% in the medium to long term. To this end, Kioxia plans to invest approximately 470 billion yen (about $2.94 billion) annually in capital expenditures and around 230 billion yen (about $1.44 billion) annually in R&D during the fiscal years 2026 to 2028, with a strong focus on high-growth, high-margin areas.

Technology and Product Roadmap

As AI applications transition from training to inference, Kioxia aims to lead the next generation of AI architecture with flash memory and SSD products specifically optimized for inference workloads.

Kioxia's 10th generation BiCS FLASH™ features a 332-layer stacked 1Tb TLC design. Samples will be delivered this summer, followed by a ramp-up in mass production. Compared to the 400+ layer solutions pursued by some competitors, Kioxia's calculations show that its 332-layer design offers approximately 10% lower cost per GB, about 10% improved power efficiency, and roughly 35% higher cell reliability. By the end of fiscal year 2026 (March 2027), the company expects the 8th generation BiCS FLASH™ to account for over 80% of its bit output (by GB).

Kioxia estimates that its commercial application of CMOS directly bonded array (CBA) technology leads the industry by about four years, and it expects to be the first to achieve a 4.8 Gbps interface speed by 2029. The company also plans to further enhance revenue visibility and earnings stability by securing multi-year long-term agreements (LTAs).

Additionally, Kioxia has initiated assessments for the construction of a new plant at its Kitakami facility, targeting production start after fiscal year 2029-2030 to meet robust demand through increased production investment.