Computing giant Western Digital (WD) is reportedly in advanced talks to take over Japan’s Kioxia Holdings Corporation in a deal that could be valued at over $20 billion.
Kioxia, which already collaborates with WD on multiple fronts, makes NAND flash-memory chips that’s popularly used in everything from smartphones, to computer servers, and everything in between.
Based on the input of anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that long-running discussions between the companies have heated up in the past few weeks and a deal could be finalized in a couple of weeks.
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If the deal does materialize, the sources tell WSJ that the combined company would probably be headed by WD’s current CEO, David Goeckeler.
Miles to go...
The WSJ had earlier reported that Kioxia was being pursued by both WD and Micron.
Eventually though, Micron reportedly dropped out, but WD continued its quest to acquire the Japanese company. If successful, the WD-Kioxia deal would be the latest in a long string of high-value acquisitions by chip makers all across the board.
While Intel is also rumored to be holding acquisition talks with GlobalFoundries, AMD has announced its take over of Xilinx for about $35 billion, while Nvidia’s takeover of Arm is valued at $40 billion.
Importantly, however, the AMD-Xilinx and Nvidia-Arm takeovers haven’t yet cleared all the regulatory hurdles, and WSJ opines that the WD-Kioxia deal could also face its fair share of regulatory roadblocks.
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