4DS - Anything but Charting, page-16433

I'm not sure acquisition is possible unless IMEC sign off on the findings of their work to "go external" (to use an engineering design term)

What corporate process would allow a company to drop hundreds of millions to billions of dollars onto a product that they cannot see the performance specs for, let alone get their hands on a physical product?

The only company that would could possibly bid (and even then, I'm not sure they can) would be HGST/WD - unless they make a mic drop of an offer, it's not in 4DS's best interest to accept it until they can get a bit of competitive interest in the tech.