[video] Press Conference for the Change in President and Chief Executive Officer

Kioxia Holdings Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, held a press conference on January 29 regarding the change in President and Chief Executive Officer.

Nobuo Hayasaka will step down as President and Chief Executive Officer on March 31, and from April 1, our current Executive Vice President, Hiroo Oota will assume the role.

Mr. Hayasaka will leave the office of Representative Director following the Annual General Meeting scheduled in June and will continue to support the new leadership as a Senior Executive Advisor. Simultaneously, Mr. Oota will assume the Representative Director.

Since becoming President and CEO in January 2020, I’ve served in this role for six years. I am deeply grateful to our shareholders, customers, partners, and many other valuable stakeholders. I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks. I am also sincerely grateful to our employees who worked tirelessly amidst today’s complex business environment.

Reflecting on the past six years, we faced the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical risks, as well as an unprecedented downturn in the semiconductor memory market. We had to make tough, painful decisions to navigate these challenging environments. Together with our leadership and employees, we overcame these challenges. In December 2024, we accomplished a major goal with our listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Over the past year, especially since mid-2025, demand for flash memory, fueled by generative AI, has grown at an extraordinary pace. We have captured this market opportunity with our highly competitive, innovative flash memory products and have achieved significant financial results. Today, the flash memory market has entered a new phase driven by generative AI. The rapidly evolving AI-related technologies and applications are quickly integrating into everyday life. As data generation volume continues to grow, our stakeholders, including our shareholders, have high expectations for Kioxia to lead the growth of flash memory well into the future. To meet these expectations, Kioxia must continue to evolve. To advance and grow further into the future, I believe now is the right time to hand the baton to a new leader.

Mr. Oota who takes the company’s future leadership has deep expertise in memory and SSD development which is the foundation of Kioxia’s competitiveness—along with production know-how. Through his experience in applied technology and technical marketing, he has built strong and extensive relationships with clients and partners. He has also been deeply involved in our global business development. Following his tenure as Vice President of Memory Division, he has served as Executive Vice President in recent years working alongside me as President of our company to tackle business challenges. Together, we have navigated challenging times. In this sense, he has all the experience and insights needed to manage and lead Kioxia going forward.

Flash memory is essential to the digital society and demand for it continues to grow. New market needs will emerge, and they will continue to transform and grow. The global economy and competitive industry environment surrounding Kioxia will also continue to evolve. With his exceptional understanding of our strengths, markets and customers, and his excellent communications skills and strong leadership, I’m confident Mr. Oota is the right person to lead Kioxia as its next President and CEO in a dynamic market.

Under the new President’s leadership, Kioxia will continue its efforts to strengthen its business and work toward further evolution, growth, and increased corporate value.

To our stakeholders, we kindly ask for your continued support and guidance.

Thank you very much.

For the last six years, President Hayasaka has guided Kioxia with exceptional leadership and I’m deeply honored to take over the baton from him. This is a tremendous responsibility, and I feel deeply humbled and motivated. In taking on this important role, I am fully committed to putting my all into this position and I truly appreciate your continued support.

I joined Toshiba, the predecessor of Kioxia, in 1985 and worked in the semiconductor memory division specifically in applied technology and technical marketing, building my career in this field until 2015. From 2001 onward, as the company turned its focus to NAND, I contributed toward expanding the applications of NAND technology into emerging areas such as smartphones, gaming, PCs, automotive devices, and servers. As we expanded into these markets, I took the lead in technical marketing engaging directly with our customers to fully understand market trends and customer needs. I proposed our highly competitive products and solutions and built strong partnerships with global industry leaders across various markets. Since then, and to this day, I have continued to pay careful attention to market trends and customer feedback enhancing our reputation as a trusted supplier and contributing to Kioxia’s business growth.

Since being appointed as Executive Vice President in 2024, I have overseen a wide variety of management tasks under President Hayasaka including investor communications during the company’s IPO in December 2024.

Now, as I take on the role of President and CEO, I’d like to share my vision and priorities going forward. First and foremost, I intend to continue advancing Kioxia’s mission: “Uplifting the world with ‘memory.’” This will remain at the core of everything we do. Through this mission, I believe we can contribute to the advancement of a digital society especially as generative AI becomes the foundation of our future. We aim to solve increasingly complex societal challenges through our innovation and enhance corporate value.

We see the evolution of the NAND market as three distinct phases. In the 2000s, during Phase 1, memory cards were integrated into digital cameras and other electronic devices and the primary focus was increasing NAND storage capacity. In the 2010s, Phase 2 began as NAND was adopted in smartphones, PCs, and servers. During this time, reliability became just as important as storage capacity. Now, the NAND market has entered Phase 3. This phase is driven by advancements in generative AI. Generative AI training and inference require large-scale data processing. As a result, flash memory and SSD products with large capacity, high reliability as well as high performance and power efficiency are in demand. Our flash memory and SSD products are not only increasing in capacity, but also evolving toward higher performance and lower power consumption.

Looking ahead, the AI market will expand beyond servers to include edge devices. As generative AI expands from large to small businesses and even to individual users, the demand for larger and higher-performing NAND will be key to the widespread adoption of inference systems. At Kioxia, we are confident in our role as a leader in supporting the transformative impact of generative AI on society and continuing to contribute to its development.

To achieve this, we will further sharpen our core strengths around technology development capabilities, manufacturing scale, and customer engagement. We are fully committed to enhancing and strengthening these areas.

For technology development, we will continue to pioneer cutting-edge technologies that meet market demands and accelerate the development of customer-preferred products. Going forward, we will develop NAND chips which should be the foundation of our competitiveness. We will bring the latest SSD products to market as quickly as possible and strengthen our ability to develop NAND-to-SSD solutions through an integrated approach. In addition, we are exploring the development of new semiconductor memory concepts, such as the previously announced OCTRAM.

On manufacturing scale, we will continue to make disciplined capex aligned with market growth. At the same time, we will drive the digital transformation of our factories and further implement AI technologies to establish smart factories. This will enhance both investment and production efficiency. Also, we will continue to evaluate various supply chain risks and work with our suppliers to strengthen resilience initiatives.

In the area of customer engagement, we will leverage our global technical marketing and sales networks to quickly get a handle on trends and needs in AI-related markets and strengthen partnerships with market leaders in GPUs, servers, and software.

As we look to enhance our corporate value moving forward, we will optimize our capital allocation policy. We will continue to strengthen our financial position, which has been our focus to date while strategically making growth investments and considering shareholder returns at the right time.

Through these efforts, we hope to deepen your understanding of Kioxia’s competitive strengths. We are committed to further communicating with our shareholders and investors. We will continue to value market expectations and take them into consideration as part of our decision making.

Looking back, all of Kioxia’s achievements would not have been possible without the dedication and talent of our incredible employees. For us to continue to grow in the future, strengthening our human resource base will be essential. Fostering and strengthening the talent that will drive Kioxia’s growth remains our highest priority. By implementing diverse approaches to talent development and enhancing communication with employees worldwide, we aim to boost employee engagement.

As one united Kioxia Group, we will continue to drive the company’s growth while helping advance the digital society and solve societal challenges.

Finally, to meet the expectations of all our stakeholders, I pledge to work tirelessly alongside every Kioxia employee. I sincerely ask for your continued support and guidance.