SanDisk and Kioxia plan $31B investment in Japanese memory plants

SanDisk and Kioxia just committed to pouring more than $31 billion into Japanese NAND flash memory production over the next six years. That’s roughly 60% of what the two companies have spent in Japan across their entire 25-year partnership, compressed into less than a quarter of that time. The investment, announced on August 27, amounts to approximately 5 trillion yen and will fund infrastructure upgrades and technology improvements at two existing facilities: Yokkaichi in Mie Prefecture and Kitakami in Iwate Prefecture. The centerpiece is a brand-new fabrication plant, Fab3, at the Kitakami site. The Fab3 gambit Fab3 alone carries an estimated price tag of 1.8 trillion yen, or roughly $11.3 billion. That single facility accounts for more than a third of the total investment package. Operations are expected to begin in fiscal year 2029 or later. For context, the Kioxia-SanDisk joint venture has invested over $50 billion (approximately 9 trillion yen) in Japan across the past quarter century. Adding $31 billion more by 2032 represents a dramatic acceleration in capital deployment. The investment is explicitly tied to surging demand for high-density flash memory driven by AI workload...