History
In 1980, Fujio Masuoka, an engineer at Kioxia predecessor Toshiba, invented flash memory,[8][9] and in 1984, Masuoka and his colleagues presented their invention of NOR flash.[10]
In January 2014, the Toshiba Corporation completed its acquisition of OCZ Storage Solutions,[11] renaming it OCZ and making it a brand of Toshiba.[12]
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 (東芝メモリ株式会社) was spun off from the Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba maintained a 40.2% equity in the new company.[3][13] 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.[14]
In June 2019, Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation 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 (later Sandisk) used (and still uses) Kioxia's facilities for making its own flash memory chips.[15][16]
On August 30, 2019, the company announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Lite-On's SSD business for US$165 million.[17] The acquisition closed on July 1, 2020.[18]
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.[3] This renaming also included companies associated with Toshiba's solid-state drive brand OCZ.[19]
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.[20]
