A few things need to be clarified here.As mjshackl said, they...

A few things need to be clarified here.

As mjshackl said, they were required to keep the company name as part of their commitments (but also as required by Japanese law from memory).

So now...

1) 4DS has never clarified with which HGST the agreement is with.


2) Assuming they're talking about the "main" HGST, they still exist and active however they legally go under "Western Digital Technologies GK"


3) Now that you know the legal name, they do R&D on chemical, material and technology engineering and are still actively doing research primarily in storage memory, specifically HDD.

Not a small facility by any means.



Now what do they have to do with the technology 4DS has developed? Not much and arguably its not a collaborative partnership at all. However it would be wrong to dismiss Western Digital because they may be looking to pivot their business from storage memory to system memory and/or AI.
Its partly why the list of the companies that *could* procure the IP is quite long, because companies that fail to innovate die a slow death which is a very common theme in technology.

As for the announcement, its been irrelevant since 2018 and continues to be irrelevant. However because the BoD seem to being putting all their eggs in the "Imec will introduce us to 5 companies" basket, these kind of announcements are required to help give them credibility until that time comes.