Kioxia Weighs $10 Billion US Listing as AI Safety Warnings Roil Markets

Kioxia Holdings is discussing a US listing of American depositary shares that could raise at least $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The Tokyo-based NAND flash memory maker has been talking to Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase about an offering that could come next year, Bloomberg reported, with Crypto Briefing pegging the window at April through June 2027 and the raise at $5 billion to $10 billion.

Kioxia first disclosed it was preparing the ADS offering in May, according to BigGo Finance, which reported the stock is up 456% this year and leads the Nikkei 225 in gains. Crypto Briefing put the 2026 rally at roughly 800%, a discrepancy in the two outlets' figures that likely reflects different measurement windows, but both agree Kioxia briefly became Japan's most valuable company by market cap this year.

The company only went public in December 2024, raising about 120 billion yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Crypto Briefing reported. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, Kioxia posted revenue of about 2.3 trillion yen, up 37% year over year, with profit of 554.5 billion yen, driven by enterprise storage contracts and AI server demand.

Sebastian Thomas, lead portfolio manager of Voya Investment Management's $14 billion AI-focused strategy, told BigGo Finance his fund holds no Japanese equities despite managing roughly $5 billion of Japanese investor money, because of liquidity constraints. He pointed to SK Hynix's July Nasdaq listing as proof a US listing can change that calculus for a foreign chipmaker, and said Kioxia's planned ADS could unlock similar demand.

Then the AI-slowdown selloff hit

The listing news landed the same week Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on Saturday, September 12, calling on AI companies to slow how fast they improve model capabilities. Amodei warned that within six to 12 months, AI agents "could be capable of taking over the entire internet," potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, according to Reuters coverage carried by ET Manufacturing.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk both said they agreed with Amodei within the day, according to Breitbart and Reuters. Altman said OpenAI would not proceed with an IPO this year, citing safety concerns, a detail both NDTV Profit and Reuters report directly affects SoftBank, a major OpenAI investor.

The warnings followed the September 8 resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who said AI companies were prioritizing competition over safety in a video that drew more than 165 million views, according to Breitbart. Musk and others have called the episode staged, though no evidence resolving that dispute appears in current reporting. Separately, Anthropic disclosed Thursday, September 10, that it had shut down several attempts this year to use its models for research that could contribute to biological weapons development, per Breitbart, and released a threat intelligence report detailing use of its Claude models for weapons development, cyber operations, surveillance and fraud, according to Reuters.

The reaction hit Asian markets hard on Monday, September 14. SoftBank fell as much as 13.2% in Tokyo trading, Kioxia dropped as much as 9.8% to 10%, and Tokyo Electron slid 3.7%, according to Reuters and NDTV Profit. SK Hynix fell 5.3% to 6% in Seoul and Samsung Electronics dropped 3.7% to 4%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company slipped 1.2% in Taipei. In China, CXMT fell as much as 3.6% and SMIC dropped 2.6%, while in Hong Kong, Zhongji Innolight shed 6.7% and Z.ai tumbled 10.5% after a discounted share placement, Reuters reported. Nasdaq e-mini futures were down 1.3% in Asian trading hours, an early indication ahead of the US market open, not a completed US session move.

Sony Financial Group senior economist Takayuki Miyajima told Reuters the selling reflects "a series of weekend comments calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development," compounded by uncertainty in the Middle East.

The China angle, and the pushback

President Trump has dismissed the idea that a real slowdown is coming, according to moomoo, and separately argued on Truth Social that opposition to new US data centers benefits Beijing. Vice President JD Vance told Fox Business there is "a very good chance" the US loses the AI race to China if Democrats retake Congress, citing America's power-generation gap, which he said is roughly a third of China's output. China expert Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital that Beijing understands the US lead is hard to erase if American buildout continues at its current pace. The Chinese Embassy in Washington, for its part, rejected the framing that AI should be treated primarily as a geopolitical contest, according to Fox News.

Amodei is not calling for a halt to AI development, according to the moomoo report, but for a deliberate pacing so that safety and control frameworks can keep up with capability gains. Altman and Musk both endorsed this position. The same three CEOs run companies competing to win the very AI race they're now urging caution on.

Kioxia's ADS timeline, still pegged to spring 2027 by Crypto Briefing, means the company has months to see whether Monday's selloff was a one-day scare or the start of a real repricing of AI infrastructure demand. Regulatory approvals in both the US and Japan still have to clear before any listing happens, and final terms on size and pricing remain undisclosed.