Applied Materials added Kioxia to its EPIC Center coalition on September 29, bringing Samsung, SK hynix, Micron and Kioxia together at the Sunnyvale, California research hub. The collaboration focuses on materials and process advances for 3D NAND flash, where reducing vertical layer spacing, or z-pitch, is becoming critical to increasing storage density for AI infrastructure. Kioxia's BiCS10 NAND technology reaches 332 layers, while leading production devices use z-pitches of about 40 nanometers. Applied and Kioxia plan to jointly develop the dielectric materials, lower-resistivity word-line fills and selective etch processes needed for denser NAND structures. The EPIC Center is expected to become fully operational before the end of 2026 and is part of Applied Materials' planned $5 billion investment in advanced semiconductor-equipment research and development.