Tuesday, January 24th 2023
Western Digital and Kioxia Said to be Considering Merging Flash Production Business
According to a report from Bloomberg, Western Digital and Kioxia are holding new talks about a potential merger of both companies' flash production businesses. The merger appears to be quite complex, as not only does it involve Western Digital spinning off its flash production business unit, which is then said to be merged with Kioxia, into what will be a publicly traded company in the US, but there will also be a second listing in Japan for the company.
Considering that Kioxia came out of Toshiba's DRAM and NAND flash manufacturing business, in which Western Digital was a partner until Toshiba divested its business into Kioxia. This caused quite some tension between the two companies, but Western Digital and Kioxia kept producing NAND flash in the shared facilities. The report by Bloomberg suggests that a management team from Western Digital will be running the combined company, which could potentially lead to future issues between the US and Japanese sides of the company. Time will tell if a merger will actually take place or not, as the two companies failed to come to an agreement in 2021, but it's possible that something has changed since then. Back in 2021, the merger was valued at US$20 billion plus.
Source:
Bloomberg (paywall)
Considering that Kioxia came out of Toshiba's DRAM and NAND flash manufacturing business, in which Western Digital was a partner until Toshiba divested its business into Kioxia. This caused quite some tension between the two companies, but Western Digital and Kioxia kept producing NAND flash in the shared facilities. The report by Bloomberg suggests that a management team from Western Digital will be running the combined company, which could potentially lead to future issues between the US and Japanese sides of the company. Time will tell if a merger will actually take place or not, as the two companies failed to come to an agreement in 2021, but it's possible that something has changed since then. Back in 2021, the merger was valued at US$20 billion plus.
14 Comments on Western Digital and Kioxia Said to be Considering Merging Flash Production Business
If I remember the Japanese government sunk in like 600 million bucks into Kioxia a few years ago. I am sure they won't be happy
And yes, second hand integrators like Adata and etc. don't count.
When it comes to HDD purchase its definitely toshiba and never WD
www.mymemory.co.uk/blog/sandisk-whats-the-story/
It says that SanDisk had NAND manufacturing joint venture with Toshiba since 1999. Toshiba took it over in 2002 while SanDisk continued making end products. It's not clear if SanDisk continued to be involved in the development of technology.
Whatever it may be, it's always the same cluster of companies: SanDisk, Toshiba, Kioxia and WD, and they never competed among themselves with flash products.
www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/western-digital-sn550-1-tb.d471
WD hadn’t used the Sandisk brand for awhile iirc, but please correct me. Don’t know why they “rebranded” Toshiba as Sandisk, maybe the db needs more info
(Sandisk is WD, don’t know what products actually contain WD/Sandisk nand though)