For decades, Toyota has been the undisputed symbol of Japanese industrial might. That title now belongs to a chipmaker.
Kioxia Holdings, a memory chip manufacturer, has overtaken Toyota Motor Corp. to become Japan's largest company by market value, according to Bloomberg. The milestone came after Kioxia's shares surged 7.6% on a single Friday, lifting its market capitalization to roughly $274 billion.
The jump was fueled by a broader rally in AI-related semiconductor stocks. Demand for memory chips — the kind Kioxia specializes in — has accelerated sharply as technology companies race to build out AI infrastructure, from data centers to large-scale model training.
Toyota, long synonymous with Japan's export economy and manufacturing prowess, has faced a more complex landscape in recent years as the global auto industry navigates the electric vehicle transition. Meanwhile, chipmakers have ridden a wave of investor enthusiasm tied to artificial intelligence.
The shift reflects a wider reordering of corporate value happening globally: hardware that feeds AI — chips, memory, and the equipment to make them — is minting some of the world's most valuable companies at a pace that few industries can match.
That a memory chip company now sits atop one of the world's largest economies is a vivid sign of how completely AI has reshuffled the hierarchy of what the market considers essential.