The format was first announced in November 2010 by SanDisk, Sony and Nikon, and was immediately picked up by the CompactFlash Association for development.

[1][5] XQD version 2.0 was announced in June 2012, featuring support for PCI Express 3.0 with transfer rates up to 8 Gbit/s (1 GB/s).

In January 2012, the first XQD card was announced by Sony, declaring a 1 Gbit/s read and write speed.

[8][9] In July 2012, Lexar (owned at the time by Micron) announced plans to support the XQD format.

[citation needed] In late 2018, Lexar – by then under new ownership – [13][14] announced that it would discontinue support for the XQD format in favour of CFexpress, citing problems with control, licensing and product availability.