Kioxia is a leading storage chip manufacturer in Japan. They are seen collaborating with storage hardware and accessories manufacturer SanDisk to produce these components for consumer use as well as various industries.
Recently, Kioxia Managing Director Shunsuke Nakato has said that the supply of NAND chips used for solid state storage throughout this year has all been sold out. For Kioxia, the amount of storage sold and shipped to their customers is fixed, and they do not have the ability to increase production in a short period of time.
Because of this, Kioxia has entered into several handshake agreements to allow them to meet customer demand as best they can, using unreleased capacity to meet that demand. According to Nakato, their customer demand has increased by at least 30 percent compared to last year, and this has caused a shortage of the component.
This means that not only has the supply for this year been sold out, but the storage capacity they were planning to produce this year has also reportedly been snapped up by memory and storage component manufacturers for the AI sector.
Their Yokkaichi factory in South Korea reportedly produces 50TB of NAND chips per day, and all of it has reportedly been sold out by their customers. Nakato also said that this issue is expected to continue until 2027.
