30 years of Lexar: What a look inside its R&D labs and factory reveals about its plans for an AI-ready future

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An interview with the Lexar team

We visited a lot of places in so little time, so we did not get a chance to get to know Lexar’s leadership team a bit deeper. Nevertheless, some of the journalists who joined the tour were still able to ask them a few questions regarding the brand and the state of the memory and storage market today.

Does Lexar plan to expand production or build a new factory in response to the ongoing memory and storage chip shortage?

Grace Su, Lexar EU General Manager: Unfortunately, the answer is no. The output is kept as usual, but the product categories being produced have been switched. Demand has been changing since the third quarter of 2025 — for example, in the past, smart TVs used 8GB eMMC, but now, because of the shortage, there’s no more 8GB. So, the capacity has jumped to 128GB. 32GB, 16GB, and 64GB [storage capacities] are missing because of the shortage.

So, we have to change a bit according to the market demand. The market has been accepting the shortage situation; so, the industry is also changing towards new applications. Lexar and Longsys have to design new technologies, like controllers and AI memory cards, to follow this trend. But also, due to the NAND flash shortage, it’s hard to expand consumer products output.

Lincoln Lin, Senior Marketing Director: I also would like to add one point here. Facing the shortage of supply, our strategy is to focus on high-end products instead of expanding our factories or manufacturing. For example, we launched the industry-first NFC portable SSD, where you can use your smartphone to unlock a private space on your laptop. We also launched the world’s fastest 2TB microSD card compatible with DJI and Insta360 products. We think this is what we should do in the current supply shortage situation. Because of the supply limitations, we have to release more high-value products and keep some differentiation for our consumers.

How is Lexar thinking about storage technologies that will remain readable, ensuring that personal and family histories can be accessed by generations to come?

Daniel Guo, Chief Technology Officer: Everybody knows that NAND flash has [data] retention issues — 10 years for SLC and maybe 1 year for TLC or QLC. So, we have two solutions for this. On the firmware side, we use technology like refreshing the data in the background every time you put the device on a host and has power. We monitor the health of the stored data and refresh them before we lose them. We’re also planning to create a new device designed to refresh data, where you put a USB device or SD card on it, and it will refresh the data every month or half a year automatically. That way, we can keep your data safe.

What’s the difference between an AI card and something that’s made for more general use?

Daniel Guo, Chief Technology Officer: There are many differences between AI Storage Core and standard SSDs. The first one is that the packaging is different, where everything is molded together. This makes it more resistant to water, dust, and maybe radiation. It’s also harder to crack or hijack the data, as you cannot bypass the controller after packaging the module.

The second thing is we have a special design for the connection, so you can support hot swapping. While you can hot swap standard cards, it’s not safe. There’s special hardware and software design for this. On the firmware side, we’re still studying the needs of AI applications right now. What we can do right now is to give configuration options to end users and manufacturers of AI devices, then we can set different partitions on this device using some NAND states for PCIe or SD.

We can set partitions for high performance and reliability — we can put OS or OpenClaw on one, and then for another, you can put your files and folders in read-only mode and keep the data safe. We also collaborated with AI vendors; we try to support API for them so it’s easier for the AI application to access data directly and get maximum performance.

Lincoln Lin, Senior Marketing Director: There are some new challenges in the AI era. Number one is for performance, number two is for durability, number three is for flexibility. Why? For example, previously, for ordinary storage, like dashcams, you can recall the video. But in the future, for AI cars, they have to make decisions immediately, instantly. So the input and output performance should be very good.

Number two, for durability, some AI devices in the future, like robots, will work in very tough environments. Our AI Storage Core is very compact and uses the latest technology, so its durability is very high. This makes it suitable for robots, and also cars, and many other devices in the future. Number three is flexibility — for example, in the future, you have many robots in your house. You can move the memory from one robot to another directly, so we’ll have to support a hot-swapping function. That’s why we’re working in this direction.

Daniel Guo, Chief Technology Officer: One more thing — we will provide data recovery, the “snapshot.” If the AI goes the wrong way, we can roll back the data to yesterday. We can record snapshots every day. This is very important for AI use and applications, but we will lose some capacity.

How are the strained relations between the U.S. and China affecting Lexar, especially when it comes to sanctions and tariffs?

Grace Su, EU General Manager: We have our Brazil factories. Two years ago, we occupied the Brazilian factories, so we have been already producing at site and use that factory to ship to the U.S. We know the risk is there and we pay attention to the very dynamic market and the entire situation. Longsys and Lexar have prepared some solutions to prevent the risk, like the Brazil factories.

As for resources, Lexar and Longsys have no problems purchasing NAND flash from U.S. suppliers, so the situation is stable. As for tariff, we don’t know what’s happening next, so we’re just preparing for whatever may come. One of this, again, is the Brazilian factories, especially as Brazil has a lower tariff compared to China. We also used to produce locally in America and outside of Mainland China, so we’re always preparing solutions.

Lincoln Lin, Senior Marketing Director: Also, for the supply, Lexar has diversified suppliers — like Micron, our competitor WD, also Samsung. Because of that, we can produce the world’s first 1TB microSD Express card.

Will you adapt to the lower end of the market as more people look for cheaper options during the shortage to increase your market share?

Grace Su, EU General Manager: Since the last quarter of 2025, we have been preparing for the scenario for lower density and older generation. We have been prepared with products, like PCIe Gen4 512GB, but the end user does not buy them, even though its price is affordable and supply is stable. This is a curiosity for me as buyers as buyers have in their mind, “I would like a 1TB [drive]. 1TB is the minimum capacity I want to have. Now that I can only afford 512GB, I can wait.” Some are waiting, while others switch to hard drives.

There is another scenario: 512GB is still in-demand for system integrators. Luckily, we found another market for 512GB because system integrators just need to assemble a PC or laptop as they stick to their budget. Some are even asking for 256GB.

Lexar also has three different Gen5 models. Last year, we launched the 1090, which is DRAM-based. The [read/write] speed is 14,000/10,000 MB/s — super fast. Due to the market and the price, we launched the 990 and the 980, which are DRAM-less. They have a bit slower performance, but we always keep ourselves ready to follow the technological trend.

For Gen5, we never stopped R&D and innovation, but according to market demand, our Gen5 sales are much lower compared to last year. Last year, Gen5 was less than 10% [of our sales], and this year, it’s even worse. But we don’t see the trend to turn from Gen4 to Gen3 — that’s not happening. In the end-user mindset, Gen4 is Gen4. Gen 3 is too slow or too low, so if they buy SSD, they will stick with Gen4.

Gen4 is still the mainstream. We have enough stable supply for Gen4, and our Gen4 products — that’s our key product. We have one model that helps us to be very strong, allowing us to get 4% [market share] in Germany.

Lincoln Lin, Senior Marketing Director: For the Gen4 part, we can put this module in the 2280 SSD: also, 2230 SSD. So, we can integrate different kinds of products; the core is the same. We have economies of scale by using this same module — that’s the way we are applying it to deal with the current situation.

Before we dive into anything else, let’s look at the quick history of Lexar. The storage company was founded in 1996 in San Jose, California, after it was spun off from audio semiconductor company Cirrus Logic. The company focused on flash memory technologies, tapping into the massive opportunity presented by the booming digital camera landscape, which began in the late 90s and exploded in the early 2000s. After nearly 10 years as an independent company, Micron Technology bought the firm in 2006.