NAND flash prices are climbing so steeply that Japan’s biggest memory maker is now telling its own sales force to ease off. Kioxia chief executive Hiroo Ota, who took the helm in April, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that he has instructed teams not to chase substantially higher prices from data center operators, warning that overcharging would dent the AI spending boom creating the shortage.
Ota described another quarter like the last one as unlikely. Kioxia’s average NAND price jumped 70 percent in the June quarter, a period that followed one in which prices more than doubled, and the executive noted that even hyperscaler budgets run out. His restraint is notable for a company whose shares have climbed about 18-fold in a year on shortage bets.
He also closed the door on closer manufacturing ties with SK hynix, saying the two are not discussing joint production. Combining the two would trip antitrust limits and clash with Kioxia’s jointly owned fabs with SanDisk, he argued. The questions trace to SK chairman Chey Tae-won, who floated a manufacturing tie-up as an option in an Asahi newspaper interview this month; SK hynix has since said Chey was speaking generally and no talks are under way.
Speculation has persisted because SK hynix holds bonds convertible into a 14.19 percent stake that would make it Kioxia’s largest shareholder, and the pair work together on nonvolatile magnetic memory. Kioxia and SanDisk are meanwhile spending more than ¥5T over five years to expand their joint Japanese fabs, with customers already signing supply contracts that run to 2030.
