Hiroo Ota (center left), CEO of Kioxia Holdings, and others unveil Kioxia's new 3D flash memory chip at its Kitakami plant in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, on Friday. Kioxia Holdings has started shipping samples of its next-generation flash memory chips to artificial-intelligence data center operators, seeking to gain ground in the lucrative business against rivals. The Tokyo-based chipmaker's latest high-density 3D flash memory chips aim to better meet AI data center needs with better efficiency and transmission speeds. The 332-layer 10th-generation chips pack more data into silicon and can store 59% more data compared with its previous flagship 8th-generation chip, the company said Friday. Production will take place at the company's second manufacturing facility at its Kitakami plant in Iwate Prefecture, which began operating in September last year.

Shares are up more than 300% this year for the Tokyo-based company. Kioxia Holdings' shares were untraded in a glut of buy orders Monday morning after the supplier of storage for artificial intelligence data centers reported soaring profit and gave an outlook that trounced expectations. The Tokyo-based company said it expects to earn an operating profit of ¥1.3 trillion ($8.2 billion) during the June quarter, above the record profit it earned for the full year ended March. Its quarterly profit also surged past expectations, surpassing that of Toyota's, making Kioxia one of Japan's most profitable businesses. Kioxia's shares are up more than 300% this year.

SwiftStack is being acquired by NVIDIA. SwiftStack is a software-driven data storage and management platform for data-intensive applications and workflows, providing access to data across the edge, core data centers and public clouds. The image below, from the SwiftStack web site gives some idea of the SwiftStack software ecosystem. SwiftStack says that it has worked for more than a year with NVIDIA to solve the data challenges to enable AI at scale. The release about the announcement says that, "Last year, when we announced SwiftStack 7, we unveiled our focus on the SwiftStack Data Platform for AI, HPC, and accelerated computing. This included SwiftStack 1space as a valuable piece of the puzzle, enabling data acceleration in the core, at the edge, and in the cloud."