Kioxia запустит серийное производство AI NAND с PCIe 6.0 и UFS 5.0 в 2026 году

Japanese Kioxia — one of the world's largest NAND flash memory manufacturers — plans to begin mass production of next-generation storage devices in 2026, specifically positioned for the AI market, according to materials from Sina Finance.

What Will Kioxia Release in 2026?

The company is preparing two standards for mass production: PCIe 6.0 (PCI Express 6.0) and UFS 5.0 (Universal Flash Storage 5.0). Both products are oriented toward AI applications — a significant signal: Kioxia is rethinking NAND memory not as a storage tool, but as part of AI infrastructure.

PCIe 6.0 is designed for server platforms and high-performance workstations, where AI inference tasks demand maximum throughput between the storage device and the processor. UFS 5.0 is the next-generation standard for the mobile and embedded segment: smartphones with neural processing units (NPU) and Edge AI systems that process tasks without the cloud.

• PCIe 6.0 — server and desktop AI segment
• UFS 5.0 — mobile and Edge AI devices
• Both standards: mass production in 2026
• Positioning — "next-generation AI NAND," according to Sina Finance

Why Has NAND Memory Become Part of the AI Race?

AI system performance depends not only on compute chips. When running large language models, a significant portion of the cycle is spent loading model weights from storage into RAM — the so-called storage bottleneck. The higher the NAND throughput, the lower the latency for the first token and the higher the overall AI response speed.

PCIe 6.0 doubles the bus bandwidth compared to PCIe 5.0 — from 32 to 64 gigatransfers per lane per second. This directly relieves the bottleneck between the storage device and the GPU. That is precisely why memory chip manufacturers are embedding themselves in the AI ecosystem alongside GPU and networking equipment developers.

"Kioxia has set its sights on the next-generation AI NAND market," — as stated in the company's announcement published by

Sina Finance.

Who Is Kioxia

Kioxia is a Japanese flash memory manufacturer formed in 2018 from Toshiba's memory division and renamed to its current name in 2019. The company is among the top five NAND suppliers in the world, alongside Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, and Western Digital; production is concentrated at plants in Yokkaichi, Japan. In 2023, Kioxia conducted an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Against the backdrop of the AI boom, all leading NAND manufacturers are accelerating the development of high-speed next-generation solutions: competition for AI infrastructure now extends beyond GPUs to the storage layer as well.

What This Means

Kioxia's mass production of PCIe 6.0 and UFS 5.0 in 2026 signals that the AI memory market is moving from announcements to actual deliveries. NAND manufacturers are embedding themselves in the AI ecosystem alongside GPU companies, and the choice of storage device is becoming part of the architectural decision when building AI systems — both server-based and mobile.