Seagate and Toshiba reportedly battle to buy TDK's hard drive head business

[PaleSentinel]

Seagate and Toshiba are reportedly competing to buy TDK's hard drive magnetic head business, Tom's Hardware reports, citing Bloomberg. The deal could be worth several billion dollars. The article describes TDK as the world's only independent supplier of HDD magnetic heads and Toshiba's only source of them. That makes this a very big deal for a small corner of the tech industry

Heads are the tiny parts that read and write data on the spinning platters. TDK supplies heads for Seagate's HAMR drives, Western Digital's EAMR drives and Toshiba's MAMR drives. In other words, all three remaining hard drive makers rely on it to some degree. Whoever buys it would control the industry's only independent head supplier

According to the report, Toshiba approached TDK in spring 2026 and Seagate joined in the summer with a higher offer. Executives from all three companies reportedly met in Tokyo, possibly to discuss a joint venture. Seagate and TDK declined to comment. Toshiba went further and denied that any meeting took place, as well as denying plans to buy head production

For TDK, a sale would be a chance to leave what the article calls a historically volatile, relatively low margin business. TDK is shifting its focus towards batteries, passive components and sensors. The report stresses that negotiations are preliminary and could end with no deal at all. So this is very much a rumour at this stage

The market shares explain why it matters so much to Toshiba. TrendForce puts Seagate and Western Digital at about 45% each of hard drive shipments by capacity, with Toshiba at about 10%. If Seagate bought TDK's head business, Toshiba would be buying a critical part from its biggest rival. I cannot see regulators being relaxed about that either

Who should end up with TDK's head business? And are hard drives still part of your storage setup in 2026?

Seagate and Toshiba battle for TDKwww.tomshardware.com