Sandisk’s 10th-Gen NAND Win Flops—Why Investors Dumped 14% of Their Stock Today

(SeaPRwire) –   By: Ethan Gallagher

Sandisk’s stock tanked 14.13% today. That’s a massive drop—even as its long-running Kioxia partnership hit a key production milestone. Investors didn’t care about the 10th-gen 3D Flash launch. They sold hard, and the after-hours rebound was barely a blip (0.98%). This tells you everything about what the market really thinks of their expansion plans.

The official release says Kioxia and Sandisk started 10th-gen 3D Flash production at Fab2 in Japan’s Kitakami Plant. The K2 facility opened in September 2025 and already churned out 8th-gen products. Now they’re scaling to 10th-gen, using CBA tech that bonds CMOS directly to memory arrays. The PR brags this tech boosts capacity, performance, and power efficiency—exactly what AI and storage markets need right now. But here’s the subtext: this capacity expansion isn’t free. Fabs cost billions to build and scale. Investors are asking: when will these chips start making money? The PR doesn’t answer that clearly, so they sold.

The official story also shouts about K2’s earthquake-absorbing structure—smart for Japan’s seismic activity. It uses energy-saving gear and AI to cut production waste. They even extended their JV to December 2034, which means 25+ years of shared investment. But the subtext is that this JV extension ties Sandisk to long-term capital outlays. Every dollar spent on the fab is a dollar not returned to shareholders. The after-hours rebound was just 0.98%—hardly a vote of confidence. Traders are still spooked by the unknowns of this expansion.

Sandisk and Kioxia’s JV gives them a solid manufacturing base, but until they prove these new chips can drive margin growth, investors will keep selling their stock.

Author bio: Ethan Gallagher, a Silicon Valley Hardware Architect and Infrastructure Strategist with deep expertise in memory tech supply chains.