Bain Capital has officially exited Kioxia Holdings Corp., locking in one of the AI era’s biggest private equity wins. SK Hynix Inc. (OTC:HXSCF), however, is still holding onto a roughly 14% stake in the Japanese memory giant—giving investors exposure to one of the market’s hottest AI stocks that often flies under the radar.
A Private Equity Jackpot
Bain confirmed this week that it has completely divested its Kioxia stake after gradually selling shares following the company’s December 2024 IPO.
The timing is hard to argue with.
Kioxia’s shares have surged more than 4,000% since going public, driven by the artificial intelligence boom and rising demand for memory chips used in AI infrastructure. The rally transformed the former Toshiba Memory business into one of Japan’s biggest stock market winners and delivered one of the largest AI-driven exits for a private equity firm.
Bain originally led the $18 billion acquisition of Toshiba Memory in 2018 before rebranding the business as Kioxia.
The Investor Everyone Forgot
While Bain is out, SK Hynix isn’t.
A special-purpose investment vehicle created for the South Korean chipmaker continues to own roughly 14% of Kioxia, according to the company’s ownership structure.
That’s notable because investors typically value SK Hynix for one thing: high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the premium chips powering Nvidia Corp’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) AI accelerators.
Its Kioxia stake, by contrast, receives little attention despite offering exposure to another critical part of the AI hardware stack.
AI Isn’t Just an HBM Story Anymore
For the past two years, AI investing has largely centered on GPUs and HBM.
Now, storage is becoming part of the conversation.
As companies deploy larger AI models and inference workloads, demand for enterprise NAND flash memory is rising alongside compute capacity. Earlier this month, Reuters reported Kioxia is preparing mass production of next-generation flash memory designed specifically for AI applications, underscoring how the memory boom is expanding beyond HBM.
That puts SK Hynix in an interesting position.
Beyond selling the HBM chips powering AI servers today, it also retains an ownership stake in one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI-driven NAND demand.
Why It Matters
Bain’s exit closes the chapter on one of private equity’s most successful AI investments.
For SK Hynix investors, however, the story may still be unfolding.
The company remains best known for its leadership in HBM and DRAM, but its continued ownership in Kioxia gives it another, often-overlooked way to participate in the AI memory boom. If demand for AI storage continues to accelerate, that hidden asset could become increasingly relevant to SK Hynix’s investment story.
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