Kioxia plans to invest more than 1 trillion yen in a factory scale-up in Iwate Prefecture. [Kioxia website]
Kioxia plans to invest more than 1 trillion yen in a factory scale-up in Iwate Prefecture. [Kioxia website]

Japanese chipmaker Kioxia plans to invest more than 1 trillion yen ($6.28 billion) in Iwate Prefecture in northeastern Japan to build a new semiconductor manufacturing factory.

The Nikkei reported Thursday that Kioxia executives would visit the prime minister's office that day to formally announce the new factory.

Kioxia currently operates two memory chip production facilities — one in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, and another in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture. The new investment will add a third building within the existing Kitakami complex.

The plan had been signaled earlier. At an investor briefing in June, President Hiroo Ota said the company had "begun discussions" on building a new factory, with operations targeted for sometime after 2029.

US-based SanDisk will co-invest in the new factory. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is also expected to provide subsidies.

The new Iwate facility is expected to become a mass-production hub for NAND flash memory, used for long-term data storage. The Nikkei reported that Kioxia has begun approaching some equipment suppliers about procuring machinery for the project.

Kioxia has long ranked third in the global NAND market, behind South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Analysis of the second quarter of this year showed that Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. had overtaken Kioxia in shipment volume, while US-based Micron had surpassed it in sales.

As the global semiconductor market expands on surging AI-driven demand, the Japanese government under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has committed to large-scale investment to revive the country's chip industry. The Takaichi administration has pledged more than 370 trillion yen in combined public and private investment across 17 strategic sectors by 2040, of which 68 trillion yen is earmarked for semiconductors. Kioxia's factory expansion aligns with that broader push.


kate01@heraldcorp.com