Memory Chips, New Landscape
The global storage industry is undergoing a major reshuffle. Players that used to manufacture DRAM are stepping into the NAND track, storage giants are moving their fabs to the United States, while long-established IDM Infineon has chosen to exit part of its storage business. The global storage landscape formed over more than a decade is now accelerating its reconstruction under the dual pressure of geopolitics and the skyrocketing growth of AI computing power. The era of the storage industry where players could "win easily" or "outlast competitors" just by relying on cyclical fluctuations has come to a complete end.
Storage Manufacturing: Moving Back to the United States?
The United States once held absolute dominance in the storage sector. If we go back two or three decades, the US was actually one of the most important birthplaces of the global storage industry.
Intel, Micron, AMD, SanDisk, and later Spansion, which grew out of AMD and Fujitsu's flash memory businesses, were all important forces in the global storage industry.
However, in the long subsequent industrial integration process, the US storage industry saw obvious differentiation.
Intel gradually exited the storage sector: it first withdrew from the DRAM business, and later sold its NAND and SSD businesses to SK Hynix; Spansion was absorbed and restructured by systems including Cypress and Infineon; SanDisk also went through the process of being acquired by Western Digital, then being spun off to become an independent entity again.
Micron is the only player that has truly remained in the first tier of the global DRAM sector in the United States.
At the same time, large-scale advanced storage manufacturing has become increasingly concentrated in East Asia.
South Korea is home to Samsung and SK Hynix, Japan retains Kioxia as well as Micron's Hiroshima base, and Taiwan, China has now become one of Micron's most important DRAM and HBM manufacturing bases.
The latest news and new changes show that SK Hynix and Solidigm may set up manufacturing operations in the United States.
According to Reuters, SK Hynix is having exploratory discussions with Intel, hoping to produce storage chips in the United States for the first time. One of the solutions is to use Intel's under-construction Ohio One fab; Solidigm is also studying the possibility of building a NAND fab in the US to reduce its reliance on existing Asian manufacturing bases. However, neither of the two plans has been finalized yet.
If these plans are finally implemented, the significance is far more than just adding several new fabs. It means that South Korean storage giants are for the first time truly considering moving their core wafer manufacturing capabilities to the US mainland on a large scale.
In fact, Micron has taken the lead on this path. In July 2026, Micron announced that it would further raise its US investment plan by 2035 to over 250 billion US dollars, and put forward a fairly clear long-term goal: about 40% of DRAM will be manufactured in the United States in the future.
At present, Micron is advancing the construction of a large fab in Clay, New York, and building two advanced DRAM fabs in Idaho. The first Idaho fab is scheduled to start wafer output in mid-2027. In 2026, Micron's fab in Virginia has begun to produce 1α DDR4.
This means that the changes in US storage manufacturing are actually more obvious than people expected.
In the past few years, the protagonist of the US semiconductor manufacturing reshoring initiative has been logic chips first. TSMC's first fab in Arizona entered 4nm mass production at the end of 2024; Samsung's Taylor fab is under construction and scheduled to enter large-scale mass production in 2027; Intel is still building Ohio One, although the current plan has been postponed to around 2030.
Storage chips were once highly concentrated in Asia as a result of the global semiconductor specialized division of labor. Now, this efficiency-first division of labor model is incorporating more and more weights of "security" and "regional supply".
Although the labor, construction and supply chain costs of building fabs in the United States are generally higher than in Asia, with the huge storage demand brought by AI, customers are paying more and more attention to supply chain diversification. Coupled with local US manufacturing incentives and the increasingly complex geopolitical environment, the "Made in USA" model that seemed uneconomical in the past has become an account that storage manufacturers must recalculate.
The Succession and Restructuring of Taiwanese Players
Within the East Asian supply chain system, the evolution of division of labor is also extremely drastic.
The player that has taken the most significant action here is Nanya Technology.
In August 2026, the board of directors of Nanya Technology approved the capacity expansion plan for the new 5A fab, with a maximum capital expenditure of 346.6 billion New Taiwan Dollars from 2026 to 2029. According to the plan, the 5A fab will eventually reach a monthly capacity of about 45,000 wafers, and will successively introduce 10nm-class DRAM processes such as 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E, as well as EUV equipment. It will start wafer production in the second half of 2027, reach a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafers in 2028, and further increase to 35,900 wafers in 2029. Nanya Technology estimates that the total capital expenditure for the entire 5A fab will eventually be about 16 billion US dollars.
There is an obvious industrial window behind Nanya Technology's this round of capacity expansion. In the DRAM storage sector, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are in the first tier, while Nanya Technology belongs to the second tier. According to data from TrendForce, in the second quarter of 2026, the revenue share of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in the global DRAM market reached 39.4%, 24.9% and 23.3% respectively, and the three companies still control about 87.6% of the market in total.
However, AI servers and HBM are absorbing a large amount of advanced production capacity of leading manufacturers. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are investing more and more capital, R&D and wafer production capacity into HBM, server DRAM and advanced processes, leaving part of the market space for mature products such as DDR4 and DDR3.
TrendForce data shows that Nanya Technology's revenue in the second quarter of 2026 increased by 68.3% quarter-on-quarter. AI not only makes HBM manufacturers profitable, but also redistributes the capacity structure of the entire storage industry.
The recent acquisition made by Winbond Electronics further amplifies the implication of this "reshuffle". On September 16, Winbond Electronics announced that it will acquire Infineon's NOR Flash and F-RAM businesses for 1.12 billion US dollars in cash. Infineon will still retain featured products such as SRAM, HYPERRAM, nvSRAM and radiation-hardened SONOS Memory. According to the plan of both parties, the transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2027. The acquired business will operate independently, with its headquarters located in San Jose, USA.
We briefly mentioned earlier that Spansion was eventually acquired by Infineon. After the transaction of Winbond Electronics acquiring the relevant Infineon business is completed, it said it will reactivate the Spansion brand.
Image source: Wikipedia
Spansion was once one of the most important NOR Flash manufacturers in the world. In 1993, AMD and Fujitsu integrated their respective flash memory businesses to establish the joint venture FASL (Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited), with each party initially holding a 50% stake. In 2003, AMD raised its stake to 60%; after that, the relevant business gradually developed independently under the Spansion brand, and was listed on NASDAQ in 2005.
After that, Spansion continued to expand its product portfolio through mergers and acquisitions. In 2007, the company acquired Saifun Semiconductor, an Israeli flash memory technology manufacturer; in 2013, it acquired Fujitsu's microcontroller and analog businesses, gradually expanding its business scope from single flash memory to embedded system chips.
The end of 2014 was the turning point that changed its fate. Cypress and Spansion announced a merger, with the transaction conducted in an all-stock manner. The combined enterprise had an estimated value of about 4 billion US dollars, and continued to use the name Cypress Semiconductor. The transaction was completed in 2015. In 2020, Cypress was acquired by Infineon, so the NOR Flash business that originally belonged to Spansion finally entered the Infineon system.
Infineon selling the NOR Flash and F-RAM related assets to Winbond Electronics actually promotes the power transition and integration in the proprietary storage market.
Will Another "Elpida" Emerge in Japan?
Mentioning Spansion reminds the author of Elpida.
Japan was once the absolute center of the global storage industry. NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Elpida... In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese companies once occupied a dominant position in the global DRAM market. But after decades of price wars, industrial integration and capital competition, Elpida was the only large-scale local Japanese DRAM enterprise left in the end.
Elpida filed for bankruptcy restructuring in 2012, and was fully acquired by Micron in 2013. Today, Micron's most important production base in Japan, the Hiroshima fab, was once one of Elpida's most core DRAM manufacturing assets.
Micron is continuing to invest more resources in this fab. In July 2026, Micron officially launched the construction of a new clean room in Hiroshima, with a first-phase area of about 28,000 square meters. It is scheduled to move in manufacturing equipment in the second half of 2028 to expand the production capacity of advanced AI-oriented storage. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has previously announced that it will provide up to 536 billion yen in support for Micron's advanced storage R&D and manufacturing in Hiroshima.
However, in the NAND sector, Japan is still continuously making efforts.
In August 2026, Kioxia and SanDisk announced that they plan to invest more than 31 billion US dollars in Japan in total by 2032, to continue expanding NAND Flash R&D and production capacity, including further expanding their Kitakami fab.
Another noteworthy point of Japan in the storage sector is SAIMEMORY.
At the end of 2024, SoftBank established its wholly-owned subsidiary SAIMEMORY, aiming to develop next-generation storage technologies. In February 2026, SAIMEMORY and Intel officially announced their cooperation to promote a next-generation storage technology called ZAM (Z-Angle Memory). SAIMEMORY has brought new variables to the transformation of Japan's storage industry. Whether Japan can rely on its traditional advantages in materials and equipment, and leverage cooperation with global giants to regain its say in next-generation storage or emerging computing power storage architectures has become the core highlight to watch next.
It does not aim to build a traditional DRAM fab from scratch. Instead, it hopes to use the technologies accumulated by Intel in previous next-generation DRAM bonding projects, adopt new 3D stacking and manufacturing architectures to improve storage capacity, bandwidth and energy efficiency. The project targets to complete the prototype in fiscal year 2027 and realize commercialization in fiscal year 2029. The project later also received support from Japan's NEDO.
Therefore, looking at Japan's current storage industry, it presents a clear pattern of "walking on three legs": 1) Local adherence: relying on Kioxia to consolidate its traditional position in NAND flash manufacturing; 2) Leveraging external manufacturing resources: through Micron's Hiroshima fab, continuously retaining the world's most cutting-edge advanced DRAM manufacturing capabilities; 3) Betting on the future: through emerging enterprises such as SAIMEMORY, joining hands with international giants to directly target the next-generation storage architecture.
Therefore, Japan may not necessarily see another "Elpida". But this does not mean that Japan has given up re-entering the core competition circle of advanced storage.
Chinese Manufacturers: The Non-Negligible "X Factor"
The biggest variable in the global storage industry may still come from China.
On the two most important storage tracks of DRAM and NAND, China has already formed large-scale local manufacturers: ChangXin Memory Technologies focuses on DRAM, while YMTC has long been deeply engaged in NAND Flash. The two companies continue to promote product iteration and capacity construction along their respective technical routes, and keep expanding their shipment scale relying on China's huge market of mobile phones, PCs, servers and data centers.
On September 20, ChangXin Memory Technologies announced that its fifth-generation DRAM platform has officially entered mass production, and launched two 24Gb LPDDR5X products. The new generation platform adopts quadruple patterning technology, further reducing the feature spacing of memory cells to 11.95nm. Compared with the previous generation, the number of chip dies that can be produced on a single wafer has increased by at least 50%.
According to TrendForce data, in the second quarter of 2026, ChangXin Memory Technologies' share in the global DRAM market has reached about 9.5%, ranking fourth.
In the NAND sector, TrendForce estimates that with the successive introduction of new equipment and continuous capacity release, the proportion of Chinese suppliers in the global NAND Flash bit output may be close to 19% in 2027.
China is developing its own storage manufacturing capabilities. In the short term, it may not immediately change the competition pattern of the global high-end storage market; but looking forward to five or even ten years, the technological upgrading, capacity expansion of Chinese manufacturers and the scale of the local market may change the original supply-demand relationship of the global storage industry.
This is also one of the most unpredictable variables in this round of industrial reshuffle.
Conclusion
Overall, the global storage industry is undergoing a profound upheaval from "cyclical recovery" to "structural restructuring". The era that purely relied on the cyclical fluctuation of market supply and demand has passed. Geopolitics, AI computing power transformation and capital restructuring have jointly opened the door for the major reshuffle of the storage industry. The future global storage landscape will no longer be a one-man show of a single region, but a brand-new game involving industrial chain restructuring and multi-polar distribution.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Semiconductor Industry Watch" (ID: icbank), written by Du Qin DQ, and authorized for release by 36Kr.