Is Tsinghua Unigroup still stalking Micron for NAND IP?

Chairman Weiguo: Buying a majority stake unlikely however

China's Tsinghua Unigroup, which is set on building China's first flash chip foundry, is talking to a US chip technology concern about a stake, according to reports.

Reuters reports that Tsinghua Unigroup's Chairman Zhao Weiguo said he wants the group to be the world's third-largest chipmaker in five years. A deal could be struck by the end of November with the as-yet unidentified US chip company.

Weiguo said however that buying a majority stake in the company would probably not happen because of US government concerns.

There have been stories that Tsinghua tried to buy Micron and was turned down, with US government concerns about the security implications of Chinese ownership of the company being a factor.

Against that background a minority stake makes sense and could give Tsinghua the NAND IP it needs to build the flash foundry it is set on establishing.

Micron is one US company with global-level flash foundry activities. Intel is another through its IMTF joint venture with Micron.

Tsinghua is building a $3.8bn stake in Western Digital, which involves selling HGST Active Archive arrays in China. Western Digital is buying SanDisk, which has a flash foundry deal with Toshiba. ®