Kioxia Holdings Corporation (), simply known as Kioxia and stylized as KIOXIA, is an American-Japanese multinational

computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term ''primary storage ...

manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate as in June 2018. It became a wholly owned subsidiary company of Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation on March 1, 2019, and was renamed Kioxia in October 2019. In the early 1980s, while still part of Toshiba, the company was credited with inventing flash memory. In the second quarter of 2021, the company was estimated to have 18.3% of the global revenue share for NAND flash solid-state drives. The company is the parent company of Kioxia Corporation.

Name

Kioxia is a combination of the Japanese word '' kioku'' meaning ''memory'' and the Greek word '' axia'' meaning ''value''.

History

In 1980, Fujio Masuoka, an engineer at Kioxia predecessor Toshiba, invented flash memory, and in 1984, Masuoka and his colleagues presented their invention of NOR flash. In January 2014, the Toshiba Corporation completed its acquisition of OCZ Storage Solutions, renaming it OCZ and making it a brand of Toshiba. On June 1, 2018, due to heavy losses experienced by the bankruptcy of the Westinghouse subsidiary of former parent company Toshiba over nuclear power plant construction at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in 2016, Toshiba Memory Corporation was spun off from the Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba maintained a 40.2% equity in the new company. The new company consisted of all of Toshiba memory businesses. Toshiba Memory Corporation became a subsidiary of the newly formed Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation on March 1, 2019. In June 2019, Kioxia experienced a power cut at one of its factories in Yokkaichi, Japan, resulting in the loss of at least 6 exabytes of flash memory, with some sources estimating the loss as high as 15 exabytes. Western Digital used (and still uses) Kioxia's facilities for making its own flash memory chips. On July 18, 2019, Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation announced it would change its name to Kioxia on October 1, 2019, including all Toshiba memory companies. On October 1, 2019, Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation was renamed Kioxia Holdings Corporation and Toshiba Memory Corporation was renamed Kioxia Corporation. This renaming also included companies associated with Toshiba's solid-state drive brand

OCZ OCZ was a brand of Toshiba that was used for some of its solid-state drives (SSDs) before they were rebranded with Toshiba. OCZ Storage Solutions was a manufacturer of SSDs based in San Jose, California, USA and was the new company formed after ...

. On August 30, 2019, Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation, not yet renamed Kioxia, announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Lite-On's SSD business for . The acquisition closed on July 1, 2020. In February 2022, Kioxia and Western Digital reported that contamination issues have affected the output of their flash memory joint-production factories, with WD admitting that at least 6.5 exabytes of memory output being affected. The Kiakami and Yokkaichi factories in Japan stopped producing due to the contamination. In April 2022, Kioxia announced they will be donating 100 million yen ($790,000) to support humanitarian relief for people affected by the crisis in Ukraine.

Corporate governance

As of April 30, 2021, Kioxia ownership is as follows: * Bain Capital Private Equity (55.94%) * Toshiba (40.64%) *

Hoya Corporation is a Japanese company manufacturing optical products such as photomasks, photomask blanks and hard disk drive platters, contact lenses and eyeglass lenses for the health-care market, medical photonics, lasers, photographic filters, medical fle ...

(3.13%)

Subsidiaries

Kioxia Holdings Corporation is the holding company of Kioxia Corporation. Kioxia Corporation is the parent company of several companies including Kioxia Systems Company, Kioxia Advanced Package Corporation, Kioxia America, and Kioxia Europe.

References

External links

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