Returns of 100 billion yuan. Across the ocean, a storage giant has been fully liquidated by a private equity firm. The focal point is Japan's storage giant Kioxia — riding the AI wave, its stock price once surged almost 50 times. As the situation rapidly changed, its major shareholder, Bain Capital, revealed that it had completely exited by July this year, with total gains reaching $17 billion (approximately 115.1 billion yuan).

In other words, Bain Capital earned back 110 billion yuan, setting a record return in the global private equity history. "Opportunities like Kioxia are rare and have been an exceptionally outstanding result for all parties involved," said a Bain Capital managing partner. Market observers believe that the successful execution of such a large-scale stock transaction indicates that buyer demand among institutions remains strong.

Like other storage giants, while ChangXin Memory Technologies focuses on the DRAM operating memory track, Kioxia primarily produces NAND flash memory. In China, the company truly advancing in this track is Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp. from Wuhan. Looking back at the previous night, overseas storage giants experienced a sudden shock, with declines of 30% to over 50% from their June highs. Meanwhile, ChangXin Memory Technologies saw its new stock king ascend, with a market value exceeding 3 trillion yuan. Amidst the calm and frenzy, everyone is concerned about the future landscape of AI-era storage.

A Decade Ago, Counter-Cycle Heavy Investment

Selling must be done beautifully, and buying must be timely. Looking back to 2016, Japanese comprehensive electromechanical manufacturer Toshiba faced a desperate situation of insolvency and delisting due to huge losses from its nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric and financial fraud scandals. That year, the century-old giant Toshiba was in a frantic state and had to sell assets to cover its losses. Its storage business was added to the sale list at this time — but in the 2017 fiscal year, Toshiba's memory division had an operating profit as high as 500 billion yen, making it Toshiba's most profitable business at the time.

Many believed that given the profitability of Toshiba's storage business at the time, waiting a bit longer would have allowed Toshiba to save itself without needing to sell. However, as the saying goes, "one can never make money beyond their own cognition," and constrained by Toshiba's internal long-term decision-making culture in the heavy electrical field, the storage division, which required continuous high investment, was ultimately abandoned. After the announcement of the split, fundraising, and rescue plan, various bidders swarmed in. Throughout 2017, it was reported that at least ten companies participated in the bidding, including Micron, SK Hynix, Western Digital, Broadcom (along with Silver Lake), Amazon, Google, Apple, and Hon Hai Precision Industry.

Ultimately, the real buyer emerged. Bain Capital, together with SK Hynix, Apple, Dell, Seagate, and others, formed a consortium to acquire approximately 55% of Toshiba's shares for $18 billion in 2018, with Bain Capital contributing over $1 billion. Later, in 2019, Toshiba Memory was independently renamed to Kioxia, establishing its positioning as a storage value service provider.

While the story of breaking through the competition seems beautiful, this transaction was not without controversy. As is well known, the storage industry is highly cyclical. When Toshiba decided to sell, storage had already gone through a super cycle driven by the development of smartphones. By the time Bain Capital's acquisition was finalized, as the smartphone market began to hit its ceiling and replacement cycles lengthened, demand for storage chips weakened, and Toshiba's NAND Flash prices slid into a downward cycle. Therefore, many voices at the time believed that Bain Capital had "bought at the peak."

No one anticipated that the explosive demand for storage brought about by the AI wave would completely rewrite the fate.

Landscape Changes: Selling Amidst the Frenzy

An epic reversal occurred. Starting in the second half of 2025, the explosive growth of AI computing power made High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) a hot commodity. Storage manufacturers like Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron shifted production capacity to high-end products, leading to a significant squeeze on consumer-grade storage supply. Consequently, storage product prices across the board rose: at the beginning of 2026, prices for DRAM and NAND Flash products hit a nearly ten-year high, with some models seeing cumulative increases of over 300%.

The frenzy first hit the capital markets. Storage giants like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, which collectively hold over 90% of the global DRAM market share, saw their stock prices rise by multiples of 5 to 10 times since last June. Also included were NAND product makers Kioxia and SanDisk. Over the past year, Kioxia's stock price cumulative increase once approached 50 times, with its market value even reaching 56 trillion yen (about $345 billion) in mid-June, surpassing Toyota Motor to become the most valuable company in Japan. Similarly, SanDisk's stock price cumulative increase from June 2025 to this year exceeded 50 times.

The same enthusiasm was also seen in China. Typical examples are the "Four Little Dragons of Shenzhen Storage" — Longsys, Biwin Storage, Netac, and Dapu Micro — whose stock prices doubled over the past year, with their combined market value once reaching nearly 900 billion yuan in mid-June.

It was precisely at the peak of the frenzy. Starting in November 2025, Bain Capital began a large-scale reduction of its Kioxia stake. By mid-June this year, its stake had dropped from about 44% in December 2025 to around 14%, and by early July, Bain Capital completely exited. "We no longer hold any Kioxia shares," Bain Capital Managing Partner David Gross formally stated in an interview earlier this month. The latest news, according to estimates from Nikkei, is that Bain Capital realized gains of approximately 2.5 trillion yen (about $17 billion) from selling its stake.

Calculated, the return rate is nearly 20 times the initial investment, creating one of the most classic private equity cases in the global semiconductor industry over the past decade.

Patience, and a Little More Patience

This once again proves the victory of patient capital in the hard-tech sector. Outsiders may not know that before Kioxia's stock price surge in 2025, Bain Capital endured years of pressure from various sides: due to weak consumer electronics demand and plummeting storage prices, Kioxia's IPO plans failed four times in a row in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024. With no exit through listing, rumors in 2023 suggested a merger of Kioxia and Western Digital's NAND business, which would have surpassed Samsung to become the world's largest NAND manufacturer. However, due to strong opposition from SK Hynix, this strategy to enlarge the pie also ultimately failed.

It was not until the end of 2024 that Kioxia finally listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but its market debut did not meet expectations, with an overall valuation of only 750 billion to 780 billion yen (about $5 billion), even significantly lower than the $18 billion total acquisition price Bain Capital paid years ago. To accompany and wait in the low points, and to be worthy of praise at the peak. The same scenario also played out for investors in ChangXin Memory Technologies. In 2016, before ChangXin Memory's first production line was even officially running, Hefei state-owned capital invested 14.4 billion yuan in the company. At a time when China's DRAM technology, equipment, and talent were almost nonexistent, this investment was undoubtedly a gamble. Similarly, in 2021, when ChangXin Memory's products had not yet achieved mass production and its performance was still loss-making, while most people were still watching and hesitating, institutions like Walden and Primer Capital firmly made heavy investments, enduring a solitary five-year journey.

After all the ups and downs. On July 27, ChangXin Memory Technologies officially listed on the STAR Market with a market value exceeding 3 trillion yuan, becoming the first hard-tech new stock in A-share history to break a trillion yuan market cap at the opening bell. Excellent technology companies need time to mature, and rational investment equally requires patient companionship. On the hidden path of 5, 8, or even 10 years, "perhaps the pessimists are correct, but the optimists will always harvest the returns."