Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has entered the global top three NAND flash suppliers by unit shipments for the first time, driven by a surge in enterprise storage demand as AI workloads evolve, despite trade restrictions limiting its revenue share.
Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has moved into the global top three NAND flash suppliers by unit shipments, according to Counterpoint Research, taking 14% of the market in the second quarter of 2026 and overtaking both Micron and Kioxia. The ranking puts YMTC behind Samsung, which held 25%, and SK hynix at 22%, as demand patterns in the memory market shifted sharply towards storage for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Counterpoint said the change reflects a broader turn in the NAND industry as AI workloads move from model training to inference, the stage at which systems run deployed models and need to retrieve data quickly. That shift pushed enterprise solid-state drives to 48% of all NAND bits shipped in the quarter, up from 26% a year earlier, and left consumer supply tight. Industry revenue rose to record levels, helped by shortages and by stronger pricing across the market.
YMTC’s rise in shipments did not translate into the same standing in revenue. The company remained fifth by sales because most of its output is still aimed at consumer devices rather than higher-margin datacentre drives. According to Tom’s Hardware, U.S. trade restrictions continue to block YMTC from Western enterprise markets, limiting its access to the most profitable segment even as its volumes increased 22% year on year and 5% quarter on quarter. The company is mass-producing 267-layer 3D NAND and is developing devices with more than 300 layers.
The competitive balance has also been shaped by the choices of larger rivals. Samsung’s share fell from 32% in the second quarter of 2024 as capacity constraints and a preference for higher-margin DRAM reduced NAND output, while SK hynix benefited from stronger Solidigm shipments. Kioxia, which sends more than 30% of its output to servers, was held back by weaker customer buying as prices climbed. TrendForce said the market is still tight, with more capacity being diverted to higher-value products and prices for some NAND categories expected to rise sharply in the second half of 2026. YMTC, meanwhile, is seeking to broaden its mix towards enterprise SSDs to defend its new position as the industry moves further towards server storage.
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