nand

The research institution Sigmaintell has released a storage price indicator showing that in the third quarter of 2026, the overall supply and demand in the global storage market remains tight. Prices for all categories of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and NAND Flash (flash memory) continue to rise month-on-month, but the rate of increase has significantly slowed compared to the second quarter, with the month-on-month increase for some storage chips narrowing to within 10%.

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung stated that the company is exploring ways to deepen cooperation with Japanese memory chip customers and suppliers, and is cautiously assessing how to jointly develop the NAND flash memory market. Regarding the company's significant indirect stake in Kioxia, he mentioned that there are currently "no definite plans."After Toshiba's recent divestment, SK Hynix's investment vehicle BCPE Pangea Cayman2 has become Kioxia's largest shareholder, holding a 14.19% stake. SK Hynix holds bonds that can be converted into nearly all voting rights of this investment vehicle; according to a previous agreement, its voting rights cannot exceed 15% before 2028 without Kioxia's consent.In addition, SK Hynix is investing over $4 billion to build its first U.S. HBM packaging facility in Indiana. The cleanroom of the factory is expected to be operational by October 2028, with mass production of the next generation HBM planned for the second half of 2029, and it is expected to employ about 1,000 people once fully operational. The company is also still evaluating the possibility of listing its U.S. NAND subsidiary Solidigm, but no decision has been made yet.

P Equity Research and SemiAnalysis researcher Nick Doyle and others discussed high bandwidth flash (HBF) in X Space. Nick stated that it is still too early to determine how much the cost premium of HBF relative to HBM can shrink; existing data mostly comes from vendor claims, such as Sandisk stating that the cost per bit is about one-eighth that of HBM. Yields, testing, and other factors will improve with scale, but structural costs such as TSV, stacking, and pSLC mode will always exist, and durability is a key unknown; if wear exceeds expectations, costs will rise.The application scenarios for HBF are narrow, targeting only AI inference, especially low batch and long context MoE models, and it is not a substitute for HBM. The actual bandwidth target is about 1.6 TB/s, which is at the HBM3E level, suitable for sequential reads to load model weights, more aligned with the capacity needs of a small number of GPUs in local or private enterprises, rather than ultra-large-scale bandwidth scenarios. Heat dissipation reliability has not yet been resolved; flash memory will degrade faster at high temperatures next to GPUs, and mitigation measures such as UCIe separation and daily refresh have yet to be validated.In terms of manufacturing, Sandisk/Kioxia has experience with 3D NAND, and SK Hynix complements HBM-style stacking capabilities, but mass production is still to be confirmed. Overall, storage is shifting towards a specialized layered market, with NAND shortages expected to continue until 2028, and HBF may further impact supply and demand.

According to South Korean media Chosun Biz, SK Hynix's NAND is lagging in the transition of old process lines, making it difficult to narrow the efficiency gap. As of the second quarter of this year, its 176-layer products still account for about 50%, while Samsung has completed the transition mainly to 236 layers. Omdia data shows that Micron's 232-layer products account for 53%, and YMTC reaches 68%.During the rising cycle of NAND prices, companies with a higher proportion of advanced processes see better cost and profit improvements. SK Hynix (including Solidigm) saw its NAND revenue share drop from 21.4% in the fourth quarter of last year to 16.4% in the first quarter of this year, while YMTC increased from 11.5% to 16.2%. SK Hynix prioritizes equipment investment in DRAM and HBM, with NAND investments decreasing for three consecutive years, from $3.5 billion in 2023 to $2.9 billion in 2025, slowing down the transition. It is currently considering impairing old NAND assets to optimize costs.

According to Nikkei Asia, storage chip manufacturer Kioxia Holdings plans to build new production facilities at its factory in northern Japan, with project investments expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (approximately 6.27 billion USD).Kioxia currently ranks third in the global NAND flash memory market, behind Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The company's move aims to follow its South Korean competitors in increasing production capacity to meet market demand.

According to DIGITIMES, Changxin Memory and Yangtze Memory continue to expand, and recently Apple is actively seeking to introduce the two Chinese memory supply chains, drawing attention to their entry into Apple's supply system. Industry insiders reveal that the two manufacturers are actually using Apple to prove that the quality of Chinese DRAM and NAND Flash has reached international standards, while secretly expanding their cloud and enterprise market share through third-party assembly for export to North American neocloud operators.Changxin Memory's parent company, Changxin Technology, has completed fundraising of 29.5 billion yuan, while Yangtze Memory plans to raise about 33 billion yuan through an IPO for production line upgrades and R&D. Yangtze Memory has turned profitable in 2024, with a net profit attributable to the parent company reaching 33.379 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026; its third-phase new factory will begin production ahead of schedule in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a total monthly production capacity of 100,000 wafers, of which about 20% will be trial-produced LPDDR, becoming its first DRAM base. The supply chain indicates that the two companies are expected to increase the self-sufficiency rate of domestic memory in China to over 50% by the end of 2027 to 2028.Yangtze Memory sells NAND to third-party module manufacturers and assembles them into enterprise-level SSDs to avoid location sensitivity; Changxin Memory has already obtained certifications from small and medium-sized cloud operators in the U.S., Canada, and other regions. U.S. private enterprises can, in principle, procure from the two companies, with the entity list primarily restricting their access to U.S. technology, but not completely prohibiting private procurement. Cloud operators also reduce compliance risks through methods such as renting computing power or holding assets through third parties. The industry believes that Apple's influence on supply and demand in the industry is declining, and the two companies have no intention of supplying Apple in large quantities or engaging in price competition, making it difficult to meet Apple's demand in the Chinese market in the short term.

According to a report by ZDNet Korea, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to continue investing in equipment for NAND flash production lines in China until next year to strengthen local production bases. Since the first half of this year, Samsung has been advancing V9 NAND conversion investments at the Xi'an X2 production line, which features an advanced process with approximately 280 layers stacked, and is expected to achieve a monthly production capacity of 40,000 to 50,000 wafers. To stabilize mass production, the company has confirmed a supplementary investment plan, focusing on additional etching process equipment, with related procurement orders expected to be clarified around the end of the year, and the supplementary investment planned to be executed starting in the second half of next year.SK Hynix has been advancing equipment investments related to NAND product upgrades at its Dalian Plant 2 since the third quarter of this year, with a discussed scale of approximately 30,000 wafers per month. Key manufacturing equipment will begin arriving next month, with plans to complete deployment by the first half of next year. The Dalian plant is an asset acquired after SK Hynix took over Intel's NAND division in the second half of 2020. In 2022, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the expansion of Plant 2, but equipment investment was temporarily halted due to market conditions; this investment is now being restarted.Industry insiders point out that the above arrangements aim to gradually expand advanced NAND capacity within China to meet the rapid growth in demand for high-end storage in fields such as artificial intelligence servers.

On August 24, according to Reuters, China's largest flash memory chip manufacturer Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. (YMTC) and its parent company Yangtze Memory Technologies Holdings (CCSH Corporation) have had their listing application accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Science and Technology Innovation Board, with the market expecting the company to go public next year. This IPO is expected to raise 33 billion yuan (approximately 4.9 billion USD). CCSH plans to issue between 1.98 billion and 2.43 billion new shares.The prospectus shows that the company's revenue in the first quarter of 2026 (January to March) reached 47 billion yuan, nearly a fivefold increase year-on-year; net profit was 33.38 billion yuan, more than double the net profit of 14.21 billion yuan for the entire year of 2025. YMTC's factories are currently operating at near full capacity and are continuously expanding sales in the tightening NAND flash memory market. The average selling price of NAND flash memory in the first quarter of 2026 reached 2.73 times the average level of 2025, and the gross profit margin also significantly increased from 35.3% in 2025 to 76.8%.CCSH plans to use 20.8 billion yuan of the funds raised from this listing to expand production lines, and an additional 12.2 billion yuan for research and development of the next generation of NAND flash memory and high-speed storage products.

SK Hynix has restarted the construction of its second NAND flash memory factory in Dalian, expecting to increase the monthly production capacity in the region by about 50%. The new production line is designed for a monthly capacity of approximately 50,000 wafers, combined with the existing Dalian Plant 1's monthly capacity of 100,000 wafers, bringing SK Hynix's total NAND production capacity in China to about 150,000 wafers per month. The factory began construction four years ago but was paused due to the downturn in the memory chip market and U.S. export restrictions on equipment to China, having only completed the structural framework.The investment in Dalian Plant 2 is driven by SK Hynix's NAND subsidiary Solidigm, with equipment installation expected to start as early as November this year, and plans to establish a mass production system in the first half of next year. Driven by the expansion of AI data centers, demand for enterprise-level SSDs has surged, with NAND prices rising nearly tenfold compared to a year ago, prompting the restart of investments. SK Hynix will adopt a dual-track strategy: the Dalian factory will use Intel's mature floating gate architecture to produce NAND at the hundred-layer level, while domestic factories like Cheongju M17 will focus on advanced NAND production of over 300 layers, the latter having announced an investment of 19.1 trillion won. Industry insiders expect that the equipment configuration of Dalian Plant 2 will be similar to that of Plant 1, maintaining a monthly production capacity in the range of 40,000 to 60,000 wafers.

According to Nikkei News, the largest shareholder of the Japanese NAND manufacturer Kioxia has changed from Toshiba to the special purpose company BCPE Pangea Cayman 2 (SPC2), which holds 14.19% of Kioxia's shares, slightly higher than Toshiba's reduced stake of 14.06%. SPC2 is the entity through which SK Hynix invested via convertible bonds (CB).From July 15 to August 3, Toshiba reduced its stake in Kioxia in seven transactions, decreasing its holding from 15.10% to 14.06%. In 2018, SK Hynix invested approximately 40 trillion won in Kioxia through two SPCs, one of which, SPC1, co-funded with Bain Capital, completed its share sale when Bain Capital exited in June this year, while SPC2, which was solely funded by SK Hynix with about 13 trillion won, continues to hold its shares. If the CB is converted into stock, SK Hynix will gain voting rights. However, industry assessments suggest that the actual impact on Kioxia's operations is likely low, as exercising voting rights requires approval from various countries' competition and antitrust authorities. The Japanese government may not easily approve this due to considerations for protecting its domestic semiconductor supply chain. Kioxia is currently the third-largest NAND manufacturer in the world, following Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

Japanese NAND manufacturer Kioxia is accelerating its layout in the AI NAND market. This year, it has launched mass production of the 10th generation (BiCS 10) 332-layer 3D NAND and based on this, introduced the PCIe 6.0 supported data center eSSD "CM10," which has improved sequential read performance by up to 92% compared to the previous generation. In addition, Kioxia plans to start mass production of UFS 5.0 embedded storage by the end of this year, with data transfer speeds approximately doubling compared to UFS 4.1, primarily targeting the AI mobile device market. According to TrendForce data, Kioxia's global NAND market share in the first quarter of this year was 13.9%, ranking third, following Samsung Electronics (31.6%) and SK Hynix (17.6%).Korean manufacturers are also quickening their pace. Samsung has begun mass production of the PCIe 6.0 eSSD "PM1763" last month, equipped with the 9th generation V-NAND and a 4nm controller, with plans to mass produce UFS 5.0 in the fourth quarter. Samsung also announced that it will start mass production of the 10th generation V-NAND (approximately 430 layers) this month, applying hybrid bonding and triple stacking technology for the first time. Industry analysts believe that Kioxia is quite competitive in terms of the speed of technological iteration, but its production capacity still lags behind Korean manufacturers, and competition in the AI storage market will become even more intense in the future.

Citrini analyst Jukan published a response to the recent market rumors regarding bearish notes on NAND and negative news about QLC price negotiations. It is not surprising that SanDisk accepted a price lower than the initial offer when signing a long-term agreement with Meta, as SanDisk is one of the most proactive NAND manufacturers in pursuing LTAs, planning to allocate over 50% of its total shipments to such agreements. Based on this strategy, it is naturally willing to accept LTA prices lower than the current quarterly contract price, and it cannot be inferred that "SanDisk cannot seamlessly resell all orders to higher-bidding North American customers."In response to rumors that Chinese module manufacturers were rejected by domestic CSPs when promoting eSSD, Jukan explained that Chinese CSPs have direct procurement channels with Yangtze Memory Technologies and that the issue is not a lack of demand. Regarding the claim that large-scale cloud providers are driving down prices for QLC eSSD, leading to some volumes not being sold, he believes that new cloud providers have sufficient demand to absorb these volumes.Jukan concluded by stating that negative headlines are more easily amplified when storage stocks perform poorly, but the fundamentals have not shown substantial deterioration. He reiterated that he remains bullish on storage. Previously, Jukan had stated that DRAM contract prices still have about a 40% upside potential until the end of 2027, and HBM supply continues to be tight. This clarification on the NAND side further solidifies his bullish stance on the entire storage sector.