Q1 enterprise SSD sales surge 86% QoQ. Q1 SSD revenue surged 86.1% QoQ, surpassing $18.46 billion, says TrendForce. Inventory levels at major suppliers fell to historic lows in Q1, while production output lagged far behind order growth. Vendors are aggressively raising prices to maximize profitability amid tight supply, driving enterprise SSD contract prices up by approximately 80% during the quarter. Samsung rode shipments of 176-layer QLC products to generate $7.05 billion in enterprise SSD revenue during the quarter - a 92.8% QoQ increase - while migrating its product portfolio to 236-layer NAND. SK Hynix/Solidigm had Q1 enterprise SSD revenues of $4.64 billion with expanded deliveries of 176-layer TLC parts. solutions. Solidigm is accelerating the transition to 240-layer NAND technology, while SK hynix has already begun development of next-generation 375-layer TLC products. Micron's Q1 enterprise SSD revenue reached almost $3.09 billion in 1Q26. Kioxia benefited from the qualification and volume ramp of its 218-layer products to pull Q1 enterprise SSD revenues of $2.22 billion. The company is currently expanding validation efforts for its 245TB QLC enterprise SSD products in an effort to further accelerate shipments in the second half of the year. SanDisk's bit shipments rose by approximately 20% and enterprise SSD revenue reached nearly $1.47 billion. The capacity limitations and rising costs of DRAM are forcing the market to adopt high-performance SSDs as an alternative tier within the memory hierarchy as AI Agent workloads continue to grow.

Solidigm announces new co-ceos Xin Guo and Richard Chin. For driving technology development and growth for AI infrastructure leadership. Solidigm, a pioneer in enterprise data storage, announced new co-chief executive officers, Xin Guo and Richard Chin. Guo, named co-CEO in March, drives Solidigm's global business strategy and execution across technology and engineering to deliver market-leading innovation. Chin assumed his role on May 1 and is focused on accelerating Solidigm's performance and expanding its capabilities, sharpening business processes, and advancing the company's growth trajectory. "AI is fueling exponential data growth everywhere, elevating the importance of storage choices," said Guo. "Solidigm is experiencing strong growth as an enterprise storage leader for AI infrastructure, and Richard and I are thrilled to work with Team Solidigm to help propel the company to the next level of innovation and growth." Guo previously served as acting co-CEO and Head of Data Center Engineering for Solidigm. His career spans key leadership roles advancing NAND flash and SSD systems at Intel, Numonyx, and Spansion. Guo holds 40 US patents and earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Yale University, with earlier degrees from Tsinghua University. Chin brings to Solidigm extensive SK Group experience where, among other roles, he started SK's first venture capital operation for SK Telecom, led commercial integration of Hynix Semiconductors into SK, and served as Chief Sales and Marketing officer for SK hynix. Chin earned a bachelor's in economics from the University of Chicago and a J.D. at John Marshall Law School. "The opportunity before Solidigm is tremendous as the AI era has elevated storage to the level of a strategic asset," said Chin. "Xin and I will work with our team members to align strategy and refine our core business to meet the evolving needs of our customers and mark new territory for our business." Read also: Illustrating the rush to key memory and storage components Enables enterprises to build, deploy, and improve visual models quickly across manufacturing, logistics, retail, and other industries Offering opportunity to further study and optimize the impact of storage on AI workloads