Kioxia plans new manufacturing fab in Iwate with ¥1T investment

Kioxia Holdings is pouring more than ¥1 trillion (roughly $6.8B at current exchange rates) into a new manufacturing building at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The investment targets next-generation NAND flash memory production, the kind of storage that keeps AI data centers and cloud infrastructure humming. What Kioxia is building and why The Kitakami site already houses two operational fabs. Fab1 has been running since 2020, while Fab2 came online in September 2025 with a focus on 10th-generation, 332-layer BiCS FLASH production. Sample shipments of those cutting-edge 332-layer products began on July 3, 2026. Full-scale production is expected to follow once Kioxia’s team finishes evaluating market conditions. This new third building will extend the Kitakami campus further, giving Kioxia additional capacity to produce advanced 3D NAND flash memory. The expansion is squarely aimed at the storage needs created by AI workloads. Kioxia President and CEO Hiroo Ota has identified the Kitakami site as strategically ideal for this kind of growth. The spending blueprint This ¥1 trillion commitment fits within a broader capital expenditure strategy that Kioxia has mapped out ...