Samsung and SK Hynix are upgrading their NAND manufacturing plants in China

Chinese memory maker YMTC has pretty much tightened  up its hold on the NAND flash chip market this year, with its share jumping to 38.5%— from 28% last year, becoming the biggest producer of these chips in China, overall.

On the other hand, Samsung’s slice has slid a bit from 36% to 33.5%, so it sits in second. Meanwhile, SK Hynix dropped from 20% to 17% and now is third. Because of all that, both Korean firms seem to be leaning into upping their own output inside China.

Samsung’s plant in Xi'an, China is said to make up about 40% of its global NAND production capacity. For now though, the site is mainly capped at producing chips built on comparatively older node style tech, think around 200 layers, since pushing layers higher helps boost storage density but also complicates the whole process.

Reuters reports Samsung is now upgrading the facility to build its V9 NAND chips, which land at 286 layers. The company is said to roll it out in steps, aiming for 5,000 silicon wafers by the end of this year, and then moving toward 40,000 wafers by the end of 2027.

Still, V9 is not exactly the newest thing Samsung has. Earlier this year, Samsung introduced its V10 NAND tech, which goes beyond 400 layers and brings improvements in data transfer speeds plus energy efficiency compared with the V9 generation. As for SK Hynix, it has a plant in Dalian, China , a site that was run by Intel before Intel moved its memory chip business over to Solidigm.

Solidigm right now is wrestling with issues around its Nasdaq listing plans , with objections coming from some shareholders and also from certain regulators.

The whole situation around building semiconductor fabs in China is tangled with U.S. restrictions. If a company wants to bring American chip-making gear into China, it has to secure licenses from the Bureau of Industry and Security, which sits under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Back in 2025, U.S. officials said they wouldn’t approve licenses tied to expansion or modernization for Chinese-based plants that are owned by foreign chip makers.

Even so, sources have said SK Hynix got the green light from U.S. authorities to upgrade the Dalian facility. That means it should be able to make 240-layer NAND chips, up from the 192-layer tech previously made at the plant. The company is also looking at making chips above 300 layers but it’s waiting on the right permits to do so.

At the same time, SK Hynix has been talking about setting up NAND production in the United States, with help from Intel. The idea there is to give SK Hynix more room in choosing how to run production, especially since China development is restricted pretty tightly.