Western Digital Corporation
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2020 to present
Irving Tan is the CEO of Western Digital, in the role since 2025. The first chief executive was David Goeckeler, from 2020.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Irving Tan | Chief Executive Officer | 2025 | Present | 1 |
| David Goeckeler | Former CEO | 2020 | 2025 | 5 |
Western Digital reported $12.92 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue and employs about 40,000 people. Irving Tan is CEO and Kris Sennesael is CFO. Since the Sandisk separation, results track cloud hard-drive demand much more closely than before. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California.
Western Digital makes money by designing, manufacturing, and selling hard disk drives. Most revenue now comes from high-capacity nearline drives bought by hyperscale cloud providers and large enterprises to store large volumes of data at a low cost per terabyte. Smaller shares come from client drives and consumer storage products. Revenue depends on exabytes shipped and on pricing, which the company has tied more closely to long-term customer agreements. Until February 21, 2025, the company also owned a NAND flash business; that unit was spun off as Sandisk Corporation, and its results are reported as discontinued operations for earlier periods.
Chief Executive Officer
2025 – Present
1 year (current)
Became CEO in February 2025 when the Sandisk separation closed, after serving as Western Digital's executive vice president of global operations. He previously held senior operations and regional roles at Cisco.
Leads the HDD-focused company, including the 2026 disposal of most of the retained Sandisk stake to reduce debt and retire shares.
Former CEO
2020 – 2025
5 years
Goeckeler executed the absolutely massive, highly controversial decision to completely split Western Digital into two separate publicly traded companies (one for spinning HDDs, one for NAND flash) to unlock shareholder value.
Recruited from Cisco to serve as CEO, he orchestrated the final capitulation to activist investor Elliott Management, fundamentally dismantling the massive conglomerate built over the previous decade.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
Key risks include dependence on a small number of cloud customers, cyclical data-center spending, competition from Seagate and Toshiba, long-term substitution by flash storage, reliance on a limited number of component suppliers, and tariff or trade restrictions.
Irving Tan is the Chief Executive Officer of Western Digital, assuming the top leadership post upon the completion of the Sandisk corporate spin-off in February 2025.
Tan previously served as Western Digital's Executive Vice President of Global Operations; prior to joining Western Digital, he spent decades in senior executive roles at Cisco Systems, including Executive VP and Chief of Operations.
David Goeckeler served as CEO from March 2020 to February 2025, orchestrating the operational and legal separation before becoming CEO of the newly independent Sandisk Corporation.
Steve Milligan, former CEO of HGST, led Western Digital from 2013 to 2020, executing the transformative $16 billion acquisition of SanDisk and integrating HGST's enterprise drive operations.
John Coyne transformed Western Digital into the world's largest hard drive maker by acquiring Komag in 2007, negotiating the HGST deal, and navigating the devastating 2011 Thailand floods.
Kris Sennesael serves as Chief Financial Officer, bringing deep semiconductor and storage capital markets experience from previous CFO roles at Skyworks Solutions and Entegris.
Tan's priorities include driving factory automation and yield optimization, executing next-generation ePMR capacity roadmaps, maintaining pricing discipline, and returning capital to shareholders.
Western Digital is headquartered in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, anchoring its corporate governance and primary storage research facilities.
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