Kioxia overtakes Toyota as Japan's most valuable firm amid AI memory boom
After AI demand drove memory chip prices roughly 60% higher, Kioxia overtook Toyota in market capitalisation to become Japan's most valuable company. Straits Times Business reported the stock rose 11.4% on opening, marking a historic day for the Tokyo exchange. Investors are tracking the supply of memory as an AI raw material.
Straits Times Business said Kioxia shares opened 11.4% higher on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, taking the company's market capitalisation to $410 billion. Toyota's market cap was calculated at about $395 billion. The 60% rise in memory chip prices linked to AI data centre demand was cited as the main driver.
Kioxia CEO Nobuo Hayasaka said in a briefing that "NAND memory supply will remain tight through the next three quarters". SK Hynix and Samsung lifted their price-floor guidance in similar quarterly reports. Japan's Minister of Economy and Industry Akira Saito said "semiconductor supply security is a key strategic plank of our policy".
MUFG Morgan Stanley Securities analyst Takashi Watanabe wrote that "Kioxia overtaking Toyota signals a shift in Japan's industrial structure toward the AI vertical". The Nikkei 225 opened up 1.2% to 47,520. This is not investment advice.
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