Dive Brief:
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An arm of Tsinghua Unigroup has a deal to buy a 15% stake in hard drive makers Western Digital. Tsinghua Unigroup is a subsidiary of Tsinghua Holdings, and is owned by the state and funded by Beijing's Tsinghua University.
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For Western Digital, the partnering could be beneficial in overcoming regulatory hurdles in China. Western Digital purchased Hitachi's hard drive unit for $4.8 billion three years ago with the stipulation that the companies run as separate entities. Western Digital put in a request to merge the two companies.
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The $3.78 billion purchase would make Tsinghua the largest shareholder of the US hard drive company and allow Tsinghua to nominate a representative to Western Digital's board.
Dive Insight:
Tsinghua has been on a shopping spree for U.S. tech companies in an effort improve its own technologies.
In May, the company paid $2.3 billion for a controlling stake in HP's data-networking business in China. It also has a joint venture with 21Vianet Group, which operates Microsoft's cloud services in China, and Intel recently said it plans to jointly develop chips with the firm.
In July, Tsinghua put in a $23 billion bid for Silicon Valley chip maker Micron Technology. Word of the potential deal raised national security concerns and that deal was never finalized.
Synaptics, a maker of touchscreen technology, recently declined an acquisition offer from the group.
