February 2, 2026 /SemiMedia/ — Hitachi Ltd is considering the sale of its data storage business, with a potential valuation of up to 200 billion yen ($1.3 billion), Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The assets under review include two storage-related subsidiaries based in Japan and the United States, one of which is wholly owned unit Hitachi Vantara. The combined businesses generate annual revenue of around 300 billion yen, the report said.
Sources said Hitachi has appointed financial advisers and has begun sharing business information with potential buyers, including private equity funds. Discussions are still at an early stage and no final decision has been made.
In 2002, the company entered the sector by acquiring IBM’s hard disk drive business and later formed HGST, which became a major supplier of HDDs for both enterprise and consumer markets.After selling HGST’s hard drive operations to Western Digital in the early 2010s, Hitachi retained its enterprise storage and data solutions activities, which were later consolidated under Hitachi Vantara.
Analysts said this suggests Hitachi may continue to participate in storage-related segments of the semiconductor and data infrastructure value chain through technology alliances or joint ventures, even if the sale moves forward.
The suggested price is a joke. Based upon NEBIT they might be worth $200M. Then you have to factor in the big liabilities: 1) maintenance for non-SAN products 2) costs of right sizing - starting with the entire executive staff, international layoffs can b very expensive. IMHO it would need to be an asset sale and they only have two assets: 1) SAN and 2) enterprise customers. They might be able to be had for free as the liability costs might exceed the asset value?