Seagate has just announced that they will be acquiring LSI’s Accelerated Solution Division and Flash Components Division from Avago, which translate to LSI’s Nytro lineup along with the SSD controller focused SandForce. This announcement comes as a surprise because about six months ago, Avago announced that they will be acquiring LSI, so this sale comes only a few weeks after that acquisition was closed. Seagate will be paying Avago $450 million in cash and the transaction is expected to close in Q3’14.
Seagate took its sweet time jumping into the SSD market, especially with consumer-focused drives, but they’re increasingly giving it the attention it deserves. After launching a full range of products in 2013 and investing $40 million into enterprise SSD maker Virident Systems in February, now they’re acquiring their own SSD controller technology by scooping up LSI’sAccelerated Solution Division and Flash Components Division from Avago. Seagate will pay $450 million in cash for the two divisions, which is just $80 million more than LSI paid for SandForce alone in 2011 in a cash and stock transaction. Considering Avago bought LSI last year for $6.6 billion it would seem that the hard drive maker got a pretty good deal overall.
