The market value was cut in half within a month! The share price of Japanese storage giant hits the limit. Is the AI craze about to cool down?

The market value was cut in half within a month! The share price of Japanese storage giant hits the limit. Is the AI craze about to cool down?

On Friday morning, Japanese storage company Kioxia Holdings fell as much as 16%, falling 52% from last month's high - which means that the company has experienced a market value cut in half just one month after becoming Japan's most valuable company.

The trend of Kioxia Group in the past year Behind the plunge in Kioxia's stock price is mainly due to market concerns that the stock price rise in the storage industry driven by artificial intelligence has been excessive. Killed in half within a month?

Since its listing in 2024, Kioxia's stock price has continued to surge due to surge in demand for artificial intelligence memory chips, becoming the best-performing stock on the MSCI World Index.

Since the beginning of this year, Kioxia's stock price has soared by more than 600% due to the strong demand for memory and data storage driven by the artificial intelligence boom. It even once surpassed the automobile giant Toyota Motor Corporation and became the company with the highest market value in Japan.

But since then, as its stock price has plummeted, its market value ranking has now fallen to Japan's fourth largest company. On Friday morning, Kioxia's stock price fell sharply in the Tokyo stock market. It fell as much as 16% after the opening.

It has fallen 52% from the all-time high just set last month, and its market value has shrunk by at least 30 trillion yen (approximately US$185 billion). "The chip industry is very susceptible to cycles and we have seen this pattern many times before," said Yugo Tsuboi, chief strategist at Daiwa Securities.

He pointed out that more and more people have recently begun to believe that global memory prices may be about to stabilize. "It has become increasingly difficult to maintain the continued acceleration of earnings growth, and fast-money investors may have been eager to lock in current profits." Is TSMC’s increase in capital expenditure a trigger?

Investors are paying closer attention to global chip companies as they question whether returns from massive artificial intelligence spending will be enough to support lofty valuations. On Thursday, TSMC’s latest developments in AI investment may become the trigger for the collapse of Kioxia’s stock price.

On Thursday, TSMC announced that it will significantly increase the capital expenditure limit for 2026 to US$64 billion, and expects that the scale of investment in the next three years will be significantly higher than in past cycles.

This has caused more and more people to worry that as chip production capacity increases, the driving force for memory chip price increases may be weakening. In recent months, an increasing number of traders have begun selling stocks related to AI technology and investing in corporate sectors that have lagged behind.

Overall, Wall Street analysts are still optimistic about Kioxia and expect its performance to continue to rise in the coming year: Wall Street's average forecast shows that its annual revenue is expected to soar to 9.64 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of 9584%; in the next fiscal year, its revenue is expected to grow another 28% to 12.4 trillion yen.

In addition, the rebalancing of Japan's Topix Index in October is expected to bring large passive capital inflows. However, Japanese retail investors’ leveraged positions in Kioxia may become a “hidden mine.” If the selling by Kioxia investors accelerates, it will put the stock at risk of further declines.

In addition, some investors believe that the exit of Bain Capital, the previous major shareholder, is a signal that the semiconductor industry cycle and stock price rise may be nearing a peak. (

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