Merger talks with Western Digital — and their collapse (2021)

A coalition of capital that blocked a union of the inventors

At the centre of this collapse is a paradox: the two parties that had shared the ground where flash memory was actually made — Kioxia, heir to the Toshiba line that gave the technology to the world, and Western Digital, its partner in joint production — could not be joined, defeated by a complicated coalition of capital. In the fabs the two could split output and investment down the middle; the roster of shareholders and their interests could not be halved the same way. The ownership structure itself, with a competitor, SK Hynix, sitting on the share register, is what blocked a merger that looked entirely natural in business terms.

That said, the merger falling through also meant that Kioxia chose to stand on its own. The year after the collapse it endured the trough of the memory cycle, listed on the TSE Prime Market in December 2024, and headed for record profits as demand recovered. Had the merger gone through, those fruits would have been shared between the new company and the former shareholders. In choosing to face the swings of the market with its own capital and its own technology rather than by fusing with a partner, the collapse became the point at which Kioxia settled its footing as a company standing alone.