Intensifying Korea-Japan NAND Rivalry: Samsung and Kioxia Mass-Produce Latest AI Storage Chips Simultaneously

The global NAND market landscape is witnessing a new round of technological racing. This year, Kioxia has intensively advanced the mass production of PCIe 6.0 enterprise-grade solid-state drives (SSDs) and UFS 5.0 mobile storage solutions, directly challenging Samsung Electronics' leading position in the AI storage sector. The competition between the South Korean and Japanese storage giants over next-generation products is heating up comprehensively.

According to the South Korean tech media ZDNet, Kioxia started mass production of its tenth-generation (BiCS 10) 3D NAND at its Kitakami plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, in early July. Building on this, it completed the commercial deployment of the CM10, a PCIe 6.0 enterprise SSD. During the same period, Samsung Electronics announced that its PM1763 PCIe 6.0 eSSD had entered mass production and disclosed that its tenth-generation V-NAND (V10) would begin mass production this month, creating a direct head-to-head confrontation with Kioxia at a critical juncture. The simultaneous commercialization of latest-specification products by both manufacturers will accelerate the upgrade of storage performance in AI data centers and edge AI markets, profoundly impacting the existing supply landscape.

In terms of market share, data from market research firm TrendForce shows that in the first quarter of 2026, Samsung Electronics firmly held the top spot in the global NAND market with 31.6%, SK Hynix ranked second with 17.6%, and Kioxia ranked third with 13.9%. Although Kioxia's scale is smaller than that of its South Korean counterparts, its accelerating pace of technological advancement in high-performance AI storage means the competitive pressure cannot be ignored.

Kioxia: BiCS 10 Foundation, Dual Push for PCIe 6.0 and UFS 5.0

Kioxia's current technological offensive is centered around its tenth-generation NAND. BiCS 10, utilizing a 332-layer stacking process, officially entered mass production at the Kitakami K2 factory in early July. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both completed mass production of their ninth-generation NAND. Although definitions of stacking layers vary across generations and manufacturers, making direct comparison difficult, Kioxia's achievement as the first to mass-produce NAND with over 300 layers holds significant technical symbolic value.

Building on this foundation, Kioxia launched the CM10, a PCIe 6.0 eSSD targeted at the data center market. PCIe 6.0 is the latest interface standard that only began commercialization this year. According to official data from Kioxia, the CM10 offers up to a 92% increase in sequential read performance and approximately an 85% increase in random read performance compared to its predecessor.

In the direction of edge AI, Kioxia plans to start mass production of its UFS 5.0 storage solution by the end of this year. UFS 5.0 is the latest embedded storage specification to begin commercialization this year, primarily applied in mobile NAND scenarios, with data processing speeds approximately double those of the previous generation, UFS 4.1. Kioxia's UFS 5.0 solution features its self-developed controller and eighth-generation NAND.

Samsung: Multi-Product Line Launch, V10 Initiates New Generation Process

Samsung Electronics has also been highly active in the NAND sector this year. The PM1763 entered mass production in early July, equipped with ninth-generation V-NAND and a new generation controller using a 4nm process, becoming Samsung's first commercial product in the PCIe 6.0 track.

In the mobile storage direction, Samsung completed the development of its UFS 5.0 product in June this year and plans to start mass production in the fourth quarter. Based on ninth-generation NAND, this product achieves a data transmission bandwidth of 10.8GB/s. Samsung positions it as the industry's highest standard while balancing power efficiency.

Of greater market interest is the start of mass production for Samsung's V10 NAND. The V10 is estimated to have over 430 stacking layers and will introduce Hybrid Bonding technology and a 3-Stack architecture for the first time, marking a new stage in Samsung's NAND process technology. According to semiconductor industry insiders, Samsung recently completed the internal Product Readiness Approval (PRA) for V10 and formally announced its mass production plan. However, the insider also pointed out that large-scale equipment investment for mass production has not yet fully unfolded, and initial output is expected to remain at a relatively low level.

AI Demand Drives Accelerated Penetration of New Specification Storage

The focus of competition between South Korean and Japanese manufacturers in this round is highly concentrated on AI application scenarios. PCIe 6.0 addresses the high-throughput storage needs of AI data centers, while UFS 5.0 targets the rapid improvement in local storage performance required by edge AI devices. Both product lines align closely with the current expansion direction of the AI industry.

Kioxia's rapid follow-up indicates that the technological iteration cycle in the global NAND market is compressing, and the gap among leading manufacturers in the commercialization window for new-specification products has narrowed significantly. For investors in AI infrastructure, storage performance bottlenecks are expected to be substantially alleviated between this year and next as these new-specification products reach large-scale mass production.