Sources: Toshiba considers spinning off semiconductor unit, wants to sell about 20% interest to Western Digital for $1.77B to $2.65B
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second time Toshiba has reached for a spinoff as a fix: in late 2015 sources reported it was weighing a split of its unprofitable PC business alongside Fujitsu, and the same playbook now targets the crown-jewel semiconductor unit. The difference is urgency — within days Toshiba confirmed it wants to sell a minority stake in its memory chip business specifically to offset an imminent multi-billion dollar writedown.
Western Digital is not a passive buyer here. As Toshiba's flash partner, taking roughly 20% of the spun-off unit for $1.77B–$2.65B would give it equity exposure to the NAND supply it depends on — a position that foreshadows the far larger move when sources reported advanced talks to merge with Kioxia, the chipmaker spun out of Toshiba in 2018.
First-order effects
- Western Digital converts its supplier relationship into an ownership stake in the memory unit for $1.77B–$2.65B, locking in influence over NAND capacity while Toshiba books cash against the writedown.
Second-order effects
- A minority-stake sale effectively opens an auction for one of the industry's largest flash assets — by April, Foxconn signals a preliminary bid of about $27B, with SK Hynix and Broadcom also bidding, putting pressure on both price and Western Digital's preferred-partner status.
Third-order effects
- The pattern that holds is full separation: the unit becomes Kioxia in 2018, and the same buyer circle returns four years later with a potential merger above $20B — memory assets migrating from diversified Japanese conglomerates into the hands of the storage companies and bidders that need them most.
The trend: Distressed electronics conglomerates are carving out their memory businesses and selling control or stakes to the storage and chip players whose supply chains those fabs anchor.