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Kioxia, the Japanese memory giant formerly known as Toshiba Memory, has started shipping evaluation samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to AI data center operators.
What Kioxia is actually shipping
The company has been rolling out UFS 5.0 embedded flash memory samples built on its 8th-generation BiCS FLASH technology. The 512 GB evaluation samples shipped in February 2026, with 1 TB versions following in March 2026.
BiCS FLASH is Kioxia’s brand name for its 3D NAND technology, which stacks memory cells vertically rather than spreading them across a flat surface.
The GP Series, a line of super high IOPS SSDs announced in March 2026, is designed to let GPUs access flash storage directly, cutting out the middleman processes that typically slow things down.
The supply picture is telling
The company has reportedly sold out much of its NAND and SSD production for 2026.
Kioxia is responding by planning to double its NAND flash production capacity by 2029, leveraging its major fabrication plants in Yokkaichi and Kitakami, Japan.
The decision to begin mass production of next-gen chips in 2026, first announced in December 2025, is now materializing through these sample shipments. Data center operators typically evaluate samples for months before placing volume orders, so the production ramp is effectively already in motion.
For investors watching the semiconductor supply chain, Kioxia’s trajectory offers a useful proxy for overall AI infrastructure demand. The company went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2024 after years of private equity ownership, giving public markets their first direct window into the AI storage cycle.
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