Why does Infineon want to sell NOR Flash?

On September 16, Infineon announced the sale of its NOR Flash and F-RAM businesses to Winbond Electronics for a transaction value of 1.12 billion US dollars. The two parties plan to complete the closing in the second half of 2027.

Winbond will continue to operate the business independently, with its headquarters located in San Jose, USA, and reactivate a name familiar to many veteran semiconductor professionals: Spansion.

As an independent company, the Spansion brand exited the stage after being incorporated into Cypress in 2015.

In 2003, AMD and Fujitsu integrated their respective Flash businesses to launch the Spansion brand. Later, Spansion became a key player in the NOR Flash market; it was merged into Cypress in 2015. In 2020, Infineon acquired Cypress with an enterprise value of approximately 9 billion euros. Now, this memory asset is split out again and transferred to Winbond.

After many twists and turns, Spansion is back. You-Jiun Jao, Chairman and CEO of Winbond Electronics, stated that Spansion used to be a pioneer in the memory industry and created numerous innovative achievements and technological breakthroughs. Winbond Electronics is honored to inherit this mission once again under the name of Spansion.

What Businesses Did Infineon Sell

What Infineon sold this time is NOR Flash and F-RAM, not the entire memory business. Products including SRAM, HYPERRAM, nvSRAM, and radiation-hardened memory based on SONOS technology will be retained. These products still target markets such as automotive, industrial, infrastructure, aerospace and defense.

NOR Flash is mainly used to store program codes and can be executed directly, so it has long been applied in automotive, industrial control, communication infrastructure and various embedded devices.

F-RAM follows a different technical route, which uses ferroelectric materials to realize non-volatile storage, featuring fast writing speed, high write endurance, and the ability to retain data after power loss, making it suitable for scenarios that require frequent recording of status, metering data and critical parameters.

Most of Infineon's NOR Flash business can be traced back to Spansion. In 2003, AMD and Fujitsu integrated their Flash businesses to establish FASL, and later launched the Spansion brand. In 2015, Cypress completed the merger with Spansion.

F-RAM mainly came from an earlier acquisition of Cypress. In 2012, Cypress acquired Ramtron for approximately 109 million US dollars, bringing F-RAM into its non-volatile memory product line.

In 2020, Cypress was fully integrated into Infineon.

Why Did Winbond Make This Acquisition

For Winbond, NOR Flash is the core business of the company.

According to data from Omdia, the global NOR Flash market size reached approximately 3.4 billion US dollars in 2025. Winbond ranks first with a 23% market share; GigaDevice and Macronix each account for 17%, and Infineon accounts for about 11%. The combined share of Winbond and Infineon's related businesses is about 34%.

It is worth noting that Winbond Electronics' decision to make this move at this time is backed by solid performance. In the second quarter of 2026, Winbond Electronics' consolidated revenue reached NT$ 59.843 billion, a year-on-year increase of 184.7%, with an operating gross margin of 66.2%, net profit attributable to parent company shareholders of NT$ 24.317 billion, and earnings per share of NT$ 5.4. The growth is mainly driven by AI-related demand. Customized memory business accounted for 53% of the revenue in this quarter, and the mixed average selling price rose by about 100% quarter-on-quarter; the Flash business also accounted for 33% of the revenue, with the revenue contribution of 24nm and 32nm SLC NAND increasing significantly.

This growth continued after entering the third quarter. Winbond Electronics' consolidated revenue in July reached NT$ 26.773 billion, a year-on-year increase of 291.55%, and further reached NT$ 27.309 billion in August, a year-on-year increase of 289.43%; the cumulative revenue for the first 8 months of 2026 has reached NT$ 152.178 billion, a year-on-year increase of 177.39%.

Winbond stated that Infineon's memory business has more than 30 years of experience, and owns a large number of automotive, industrial and infrastructure customers, as well as the original supply chain and R&D system.

For these industry applications, the customer verification cycle is very long. Therefore, directly acquiring a mature business is far faster than entering these customer groups from scratch. Winbond's choice to reactivate the Spansion name also retains the original brand recognition of the business.

Where Will Infineon's Funds Be Invested

Infineon did not disclose the revenue and profit of these two businesses in the announcement, only stating that it will further focus its product portfolio and capital allocation on core growth areas.

The company's investment direction in recent years has been relatively clear. The automotive sector remains one of its largest businesses, with power devices such as SiC, GaN, and IGBT continuing to expand; the power demand brought by AI data centers has become a new growth direction. In August, Infineon just acquired C2i Semiconductors to strengthen its power management business for AI data centers. Not long ago, Infineon also acquired Marvell's automotive Ethernet business and AMS-OSRAM's sensor business.

At present, the shortage of NOR Flash is relatively serious, and the price has risen sharply. Selling the related business at this time and focusing on power and automotive sectors is also a favorable choice for Infineon.

This article is from the WeChat official account "EEWORLD" (ID: EEworldbbs), written by Ji Kai, and authorized for release by 36Kr.