SanDisk
More info
- Creator
- Eli Harari, Sanjay Mehrotra, Jack Yuan
- Released
- 1988
- Type
- Flash memory maker
- Website
- sandisk.com
The flash memory company whose name was, for decades, printed on the card in your camera and the USB stick in your pocket.
Eli Harari, Sanjay Mehrotra and Jack Yuan started the company in 1988 on a bet that looked odd at the time: that flash memory could replace hard drives in small devices. CompactFlash followed in 1994, and in 1999 SanDisk developed the SD card with Panasonic and Toshiba. It also co-owned fabs in Japan with Toshiba, a partnership that ran for decades.
The patent portfolio was at least as profitable as the cards; royalties from competitors were a dependable revenue stream. Western Digital bought SanDisk in 2016 for around $19 billion, only to spin the flash business back out under the old name in 2025. By then Mehrotra had long since moved on to run Micron.