Toto is best known for making high-end toilets, but the company also has a less glamorous side business: producing ceramic materials used in NAND flash memory manufacturing. Now they're increasing investment in that division as the memory industry faces supply constraints.
The connection makes more sense than it sounds. Advanced ceramics require precise material science and manufacturing expertise, whether you're making bathroom fixtures or semiconductor components. Toto's been in the ceramics game for decades, so they've got the technical chops.
For anyone working with AI tools, this matters because NAND memory is what powers the storage in everything from your laptop to cloud servers running AI models. More production capacity could eventually mean more affordable storage options.
The timing is notable. As AI workloads demand more storage and faster read/write speeds, memory manufacturers are scrambling to keep up. Having a toilet maker step up production capacity is an unexpected but welcome development.
It's a reminder that the AI supply chain depends on some surprising players. The next time you're waiting for a model to load or dealing with storage limits, remember there's a toilet company working behind the scenes to help solve the problem.
