Solidigm CEO: Rancho Cordova data storage firm ‘at very beginning’ of demand upswing
Solidigm, the Rancho Cordova-based flash memory storage company, has poured more than $100 million into its regional facilities since 2022, the year after the firm spun out of Intel in a $9 billion acquisition by South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix.
The company’s products — which are used in data centers — are seeing new demand amid the AI boom. Its customers include the top five companies in the Fortune 500.
Demand for Solidigm’s data storage drives used to be somewhat self-limited, co-CEO Xin Guo said in a recent interview. There was a spike in demand when e-commerce was popularized. But eventually the market was saturated. Only so many people were going to order goods online. Then during the pandemic, there was a swell of demand for infrastructure upgrades, as telework was popularized.
“That was the boom in ‘21, ‘22,” Guo said. “Then, saturated.”
But this cycle looks different. With generative AI, while a human might still start the process, Guo continued, “at the back end it’s really the machines talking to each other.” When someone types a one-sentence question into ChatGPT, there may be “hundreds of agents in the background, pinging the infrastructure, getting the information, analyzing it, going through multiple steps” to form a response, he said.
So now, Guo said, his industry is in a “supercycle.”
Catching up with demand
For Guo, who was appointed co-CEO this year, the task ahead is to meet customers’ demands and do the work of developing even better, more efficient drives. Last year the company unveiled its 122-terabyte drive — a device about the size of a deck of cards, with space enough to hold every movie released in the 1990s. This year, Guo said, it will launch one with 245 terabytes.
“We see this demand as long-term,” Guo said. “We’re really at the very beginning.”
The firm recently acquired more space in the office park off Highway 50 where it has its headquarters and the majority of its design and research and development work, part of a $25 million investment in workplace improvements.
Solidigm’s parent company, the South Korean chipmaker SK hynix, announced earlier this year that it planned to spend $10 billion creating a new AI solutions company in the U.S. Solidigm would become a subsidiary.
Guo said the new entity would be an “investment holding company,” and wouldn’t affect operations at Solidigm, which is viewed as “one of their core assets.”
The challenge for Solidigm, for now, is catching up to demand
“I cannot foresee a limit,” Guo said. “This is just going to increase.”
Staying power
Guo was made acting co-CEO last year, and earlier this year was appointed to the job on a permanent basis. In May, Solidigm announced Richard Chin, who worked for SK Group, as Guo’s co-CEO.
The pair have complementary skills, Guo said, with his engineering background and deep roots with the memory team, and Chin’s experience in corporate development and strategy. Chin was not available for an interview.
Guo, who previously worked at Intel, was based in the Bay Area for many years, and moved to Folsom in 2023.
The region — where Solidigm has more than 700 of its 2,100-person workforce — has some clear advantages, he said. It has a highly educated workforce and good training programs in its colleges and trade schools. And the quality of life helps keep workers local.
“People stay,” Guo said. “They want to work here, build a career here, build a company here. So they can enjoy life here.”
