Samsung, SK Hynix to Upgrade China Plants for 200+ Layer NAND Amid AI Storage Demand

On October 21, media reports said Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to upgrade their plants in China to produce NAND flash chips with more than 200 stacked layers, responding to growing AI storage demand and pushing back against Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) in the Chinese market.

People familiar with the matter said the two companies are working to bring their China manufacturing capabilities closer to their home-country levels. U.S. export controls on chipmaking equipment since 2022 have limited technology upgrades at Samsung and SK Hynix's Chinese facilities, allowing YMTC to gain market share. According to Omdia, YMTC held 38.5% of China's NAND market in the second quarter of 2026, surpassing Samsung's 33.5% and SK Hynix's 17%.

Samsung's Xi'an plant, which currently produces around 200-layer NAND and accounts for about 40% of Samsung's global NAND output, has started an internal project codenamed "Monami" to convert its production lines to 286-layer V9 NAND, targeting monthly wafer capacity of 5,000 wafers by December 2026 and 40,000 by December 2027. Samsung said the upgrade complies with U.S. regulations and aims to meet global customer demand rather than expand total capacity. SK Hynix plans to upgrade its Dalian plant from 192-layer products to 240 layers or above. The facility, acquired from Intel's NAND business in 2021, is now the sole NAND production base for Solidigm, SK Hynix's subsidiary preparing for a U.S. listing.