Ann: IMEC Collaboration and Patent Update, page-162

The scenario of an acquisition by an established manufacturer in the data storage space. 4DS would first need to complete the minimum required development of its technology in order to prove the commercial viability of Interface Switching ReRAM. Any acquirer will then need to further develop the technology to commercial insertion into the market.

Given 4DS’ development agreement with HGST and the acquisitive nature of its parent company, Western Digital would be a very likely acquirer in this scenario.

Western Digital’s largest acquisition to date was in 2015, when it acquired SanDisk for $19.0B. Western Digital has acquired in 2 different US states, and 2 countries. The Company’s most targeted sectors include software (47%) and technology hardware (47%).

For clarity - Western Digital is shown as the acquiring company below - although in some cases - the acquisitions were done by WDC's SSD surrogate HGST.

In March 2009 - Western Digital entered the SSD market by acquiring SiliconSystems for $65 million in a cash transaction. SiliconSystems was a Top SSD Company in the industrial SSD market. WDC didn't continue the development of the acquired product line into the MLC industrial era.

In March 2011 - Western Digital announced it would acquire (Hitachi GST) HGST for approximately $4.3 billion. Although the primary motive was hard drives - the companies said they would put more resources into SSDs too. The acquisition took a year to complete, and as a result WDC acquired a SAS SSD product line.

In June 2013 - Western Digital announced it had agreed to buy Stec for approximately $340 million. Stec at the time had a market proven but ageing SAS SSD product line and an established market presence in the industrial and military SSD markets. WDC didn't maintain the military and industrial SSD product lines after the acquisition.

In July 2013 - Western Digital announced it had acquired VeloBit (an SSD software company operating in the SSD auto-caching market).

In September 2013 - Western Digital acquired Virident Systems (a leading PCIe SSD company) for approximately $685 million in cash.

In December 2014 - Western Digital acquired Skyera - which at that time - due to its unique big controller architecture - had a commanding lead in rackmount storage capacity density in the petabyte SSD market. WDC almost immediately after the acquisition end of lifed Skyera's product line. And although it is not yet clear where the acquired systems IP will be used - it has many possible applications within cloud focused rackmount systems.

In October 2015 - Western Digital agreed to acquire SanDisk for $19 billion. SanDisk at that time had entered the standard rackmount SSD market and had enterprise SSD product lines in the PCIe SSD market (primarily from Fusion-io), Software (from FlashSoft and other acquisitions) and SAS SSDs (from SMART Storage). SanDisk was also a leading supplier of consumer SSDs and flash memory. And SanDisk had also entered the memory channel SSD (DIMM wars) market with a first generation product designed in partnership with Diablo.

Aug 28, 2017 Acquisition Sets the Stage for Western Digital's Continued Growth in Cloud Services Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) and Upthere, Inc. announced today that Western Digital has completed the asset acquisition of Upthere, a leading cloud services company that is providing a new and better way to keep, find and share what's important and meaningful to consumers. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Upthere provides an enhanced storage experience designed to be the single home for all of a user's photos, videos, documents and music. The Upthere app is platform agnostic and available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, as well as macOS and Windows PCs. The addition of Upthere's technology and team to Western Digital's Client Solutions business unit will enhance the company's consumer products portfolio with new cloud-based offerings.

Sep 4, 2017 Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) and Tegile Systems ("Tegile") announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Tegile, a leading provider of flash and persistent-memory storage solutions for enterprise data center applications, will be acquired by Western Digital. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.