Toshiba Memory Corp changes name to Kioxia

Toshiba Memory Corporation is rebranding as Kioxia on October 1.

TMC makes NAND flash memory and runs a joint venture with Western Digital to fabricate NAND at plants in Japan.

Once a wholly-owned part of Toshiba, TMC was spun out and partly sold for $18bn to a Bain Capital-led consortium in September 2017. The sale helped Toshiba to re-capitalise after incurring substantial losses at its Westinghouse nuclear power station subsidiary.

SInce then TMC has grown its business enough to buy out some of the shareholders who took part in the Bain bid.

Now it is rebranding as Kioxia. This is a portmanteau formed from the Japanese word kioku, meaning “memory” and the Greek word axia, meaning “value”. Kioxia-to-be said its mission is to uplift the world with “memory”.

The company sees a bright future with the increasing demand for large-capacity, high-performance storage and compute, which will require lots of flash memory.

Chairman Stacy Smith said in high-falutin’ canned quote “Using ‘memory’ as our starting point, Kioxia will collaborate with people to meet the various needs of everyday life, making the world more interesting and providing long-lasting value to society.”

President and CEO Yasuo Naruke said: “The word ‘memory’ means much more than simply recorded data. To us, it represents the comprehensive collection of emotions, experiences and ideas beyond digital information gathering. In close collaboration with stakeholders, Kioxia will unleash the full potential of “memory” to deliver value to people worldwide.”Smith raised the possibility of future acquisitions in a Financial Times interview.

All TMC subsidiaries will be rebranded as Kioxia concerns – Toshiba Memory America, Inc. becomes Kioxia America, Inc, for example. In due course we might expect Toshiba flash products to be re-branded as Kioxia.