Trio of components vendors plans for future growth

AMD sells Texas campus and leases it back to raise cash, Western Digital invests in storage firm and Seagate celebrates two billion shipment milestone

Chip maker AMD has agreed to sell and lease back its Austin, Texas campus to raise $164m (£110m) in cash and diversify beyond the PC industry, a Reuters article has claimed.

The firm, which sold and leased back its California HQ in 1998, said its Q1 results would include the proceeds of the deal along with a special charge of about $50m for the difference between the sale proceeds and the carry value of the property.

In separate news, hard drive manufacturer Western Digital announced that it made a strategic investment in storage vendor Skyera as part of its recently announced Series B round of financing.

Western Digital Capital co-invested in the $51m round as an extension of its strategic relationship with the firm, which also includes joint technology development.

Radoslav Danilak, chief executive of Skyera, said: “The backing of Western Digital has enabled us to ramp our business across marketing, sales and engineering…. having a close working relationship with Western Digital is invaluable as we set to reshape the storage landscape.”

Steve Milligan, chief executive of Western Digital, said: “We see companies like Skyera as offering a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges. We will continue to support innovation by collaborating with customers and partners, and investing in companies that are addressing today’s most exciting storage opportunities.”

And finally Seagate is celebrating shipping its two billionth hard disk drive. It took the company 29 years to reach its first billion and just four to double the number.

Steve Luczo, chief executive of Seagate, said: “This is truly an impressive landmark to reach two billion drives shipped only four years after we reached our first billion. I am proud to lead this company and share in its accomplishment.”

Scott Horn, vice president of marketing at Seagate, added: “The first billion drives digitised the office, the second the home – empowering consumers with the ability to bring aggregated content from their PC into the living room, on to their mobile device, wherever. It’s about consumers creating, storing, sharing, and most importantly accessing digital content on their terms – anytime, anywhere – and with two billion drives shipped, clearly the revolution is on.”