Solidigm's Korean unit closes amid sluggish NAND market

Solidigm's Rancho Cordova headquarters in California [SOLIDIGM]

The Korean unit of Solidigm, a U.S.-based memory chip company owned by SK hynix, was found to have been shut down in July, as part of the company’s downsizing effort amid sluggish market conditions.

Solidigm’s Korean unit, mostly in charge of sales in Korea, closed its doors in July when its U.S. headquarters laid off 10 percent of its global workforce.

“Solidigm let go its employees in July when the NAND flash memory chip business was struggling, in order enhance the company's operation efficiency,” a SK hynix spokesman said Friday.

"Other global branches may be taking a similar step as the Korean branch, but this has not been confirmed."

Solidigm is a rebranding of Intel’s NAND flash memory chip business division, acquired by SK hynix in 2021 under a $9 billion mega deal. It mainly provides NAND flash memory solutions, including solid-state drives for data centers and more. The two companies' first joint product P5530 was introduced last year.

In the face of prolonged market downturn, however, Solidigm's California headquarters laid off 98 employees in July.

The NAND flash memory market was especially slow to recover compared to DRAM, which is being boosted by the AI hype.

Major memory chipmakers - Samsung Electronics and SK hynix - announced they will additionaly cut production of NAND flash memory chips this year during their respective conference calls for the second quarter.

The revenue of SK hynix's U.S. subsidiary NAND Product Solutions which includes Solidigm, nosedived by 53.6 percent in the first half of this year, while its net loss snowballed from 250 billion won to 2.2 trillion won during the cited period, according to its semi-annual business report.

There won't be good news anytime soon in the NAND flash memory market, as market size is expected to drop by 27.2 percent this year compared to last year, according to Omdia.

“Solidigm's sales in Korea will be handled by agencies from now on,” the SK hynix spokesman said.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]