Driven by the explosive boom in the artificial intelligence semiconductor market, hundreds of employees at the Japanese memory chip maker Kioxia have become millionaires.

According to reports from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and other sources, approximately 600 Kioxia employees, including department and section managers, have amassed an average of 1 billion yen—worth over 10 billion Korean won—each through stock options granted in the past.

Kioxia originated from the NAND flash memory division, which was the first in the world to be developed by Toshiba.

However, after its parent company, Toshiba, suffered massive losses in its nuclear power business, the division was sold in 2018 for approximately 20 trillion won to a U.S.-Japan-Korea consortium led by the U.S. investment firm Bain Capital, with participation from South Korea's SK Hynix.

At the time, Bain Capital granted large-scale stock options not only to executives but also to department and section-level managers who were key to practical operations.

Although the U.S. headquarters of Bain Capital initially opposed this unconventional decision, the Japanese investment team successfully persuaded them by emphasizing the importance of core talent responsible for day-to-day operations, arguing that "corporate value rises when economic rewards are shared."

The stock compensation plan even included former employees who had worked as welders or technicians.

Since then, as corporate value skyrocketed alongside the surge in demand for AI memory, the fortunes of these employees have changed.

The stock price, which stood at 1,455 yen at the time of its listing in December 2024, is now trading in the 90,000 yen range.

Based on the year-to-date high of 112,700 yen recorded on June 22, the total value of the initially granted stock options reaches a staggering 790 billion yen.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun highlighted this as a new case study for performance rewards in the AI era. The report also mentioned projections that employees at South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to receive performance bonuses of around 600 million won this year, as well as the case of U.S.-based SpaceX, where thousands of employees became millionaires through stock compensation.

The newspaper assessed the situation by stating, "The AI revolution is going beyond creating new industries; it is fundamentally changing existing compensation systems regarding who shares in the fruits of corporate growth and how."

Reported by Lee Hyeon-yeong | Video by Kim Na-on | Graphics by Yook Do-hyun | Produced by SBS Digital News