CorpDigest
Western Digital Corporation
Leadership History
3 leaders · Full leadership timeline
Last reviewed: 2025-06-08 · By Swet Parvadiya
Western Digital's flash memory business and hard disk drive business are structurally different enough that running them together has suppressed the valuation of each. The pending corporate separation into two independent, publicly traded entities is designed to fix that — giving the high-cash-flow HDD business freedom to execute share buybacks while the flash business raises specialized capital for fab expansions without competing against each other in the same capital allocation process. The company generated $12.32 billion in fiscal 2024 revenue, essentially flat with fiscal 2023 ($12.32 billion), with a net loss of $450 million that reflects the brutal NAND flash price downcycle of 2023-2024. The recovery in NAND pricing as the cycle turns has improved the trajectory materially heading into fiscal 2025. Western Digital is one of two companies in the world capable of manufacturing high-capacity hard disk drives at the scale that hyperscale cloud providers require. The other is Seagate. Together they supply essentially all of the 20TB-plus drives that fill data centers operated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The engineering required to push areal density above 24 terabytes per drive — using helium-sealed enclosures, micro-actuators, and energy-assisted magnetic recording — is a decade-plus of accumulated investment that cannot be replicated quickly. The SanDisk acquisition in 2016 for $16 billion brought Western Digital into NAND flash. The flash business operates through a joint venture with Kioxia, sharing capital expenditures, R&D costs, and fab output from facilities in Yokkaichi and Kitakami, Japan. That joint venture structure creates dependency and complexity, but also allows both companies to share the enormous cost of building and maintaining leading-edge semiconductor fabrication.
Chief Executive Officer
Tan assumed the role of CEO in 2023, successfully guiding the company through the depths of the catastrophic NAND pricing crash, aggressively managing the balance sheet, and initiating the transformative strategic pivot to formally separate the company's Flash and HDD businesses to unlock immense shareholder value.
Former Chief Executive Officer
Goeckeler led the company through the initial phases of the post-pandemic supply chain crisis and the early stages of the memory downturn, focusing on operational optimization and the initial strategic reviews that would eventually lead to the decision to separate the Flash and HDD businesses.
Former Chief Executive Officer
Milligan served as CEO during the company's most aggressive expansion phase, orchestrating the massive $16 billion acquisition of SanDisk in 2016, which transformed Western Digital into a dual-portfolio powerhouse, while simultaneously managing the complex integration of the HGST acquisition.
The single most immediate and financially dangerous challenge threatening Western Digital's profitability and strategic execution in FY2024 and extending into FY2025 is the brutal, inescapable cyclicality of the global NAND flash memory market, combined with the immense execution risk and financial complexity associated with the impending corporate spin-off of its Flash and HDD businesses.
Irving Tan has served as chief executive officer of Western Digital since March 2025, when he took the role at the post-spinoff HDD-focused company following the February 2025 separation of SanDisk Corporation. Tan succeeded David Goeckeler, who had served as CEO of the combined Western Digital from 2020 to 2025 and moved to lead the newly independent SanDisk after the split. Tan was promoted to Western Digital CEO from inside the company after holding senior executive roles. His mandate centers on running the pure-play hard disk drive business focused on mass-capacity nearline drives for cloud and enterprise customers including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, executing the energy-assisted recording technology roadmap that includes HAMR and MAMR, managing the two-supplier HDD market dynamic with Seagate Technology and preserving the manufacturing footprint across Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. The HDD-focused company's revenue base is smaller than the pre-spin combined company's approximately $12.32 billion in fiscal 2024 because flash revenue moved with SanDisk. The market capitalization of the combined company sat at roughly $22 billion before the separation. Tan leads the company from headquarters in San Jose, California.
David Goeckeler served as chief executive officer of Western Digital from March 2020 to March 2025, leading the company through one of its most turbulent five-year stretches. Goeckeler was recruited from Cisco Systems, where he had been a senior executive running the networking business, succeeding Stephen Milligan, who retired. He took the role just as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains and shifted consumer demand patterns. During his tenure he led the company through the 2021 storage demand surge, the 2022 and 2023 cyclical downturn, the failed 2023 Kioxia merger talks and the Elliott Management activist push for a separation. He also accelerated investment in mass-capacity HDDs for cloud customers and energy-assisted recording technologies HAMR and MAMR. Ultimately Goeckeler oversaw the planning and execution of the February 2025 SanDisk spinoff and chose to move with the spun-off SanDisk to serve as its CEO rather than remain with the HDD-focused Western Digital. Irving Tan was named CEO of the post-spin HDD company in March 2025. The combined company generated approximately $12.32 billion in revenue in fiscal 2024 with a market capitalization of roughly $22 billion before the separation.
Elliott Management, the activist hedge fund led by Paul Singer, publicly campaigned for a separation of Western Digital's hard disk drive and NAND flash businesses beginning in 2023, arguing that the combined structure suppressed the inherent value of each operation. Elliott's thesis emphasized that HDDs and flash had fundamentally different capital intensity profiles, with flash requiring multi-billion dollar fab investments in semiconductor manufacturing while HDDs required lower-intensity assembly and testing capacity. The two businesses also served overlapping but distinct customer sets, with HDDs concentrated in cloud and enterprise data center mass-capacity workloads and flash spanning consumer, mobile, client SSD and enterprise SSD markets. Cyclical patterns had proven more synchronized than the original 2016 SanDisk deal thesis assumed, undermining the diversification rationale. Elliott's letters to the board and public statements gained traction when the proposed 2023 Kioxia merger collapsed, removing the most compelling argument for keeping the flash business under the same roof. The board ultimately approved the separation, and the SanDisk spinoff was completed in February 2025. Irving Tan became CEO of the HDD-focused Western Digital in March 2025 while David Goeckeler moved to lead the spun-off SanDisk.
Irving Tan, who took the chief executive officer role at the post-spinoff HDD-focused Western Digital in March 2025, came up through senior executive positions inside the company before being elevated to lead the standalone HDD business. Tan's industry experience spans storage technology, hardware operations and customer-facing roles supporting cloud and enterprise data center customers. He was identified as the internal succession candidate when the board approved the February 2025 SanDisk spinoff and David Goeckeler chose to move with SanDisk rather than remain with the HDD company. Tan's mandate as CEO emphasizes mass-capacity nearline HDDs for cloud customers including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, the execution of the energy-assisted recording technology roadmap including HAMR for heat-assisted magnetic recording and MAMR for microwave-assisted magnetic recording, manufacturing efficiency at Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines sites and competitive positioning in the two-supplier HDD market with Seagate Technology. The HDD-focused Western Digital operates at a smaller revenue base than the pre-spin combined company's approximately $12.32 billion in fiscal 2024 because flash revenue moved with SanDisk. Tan leads from headquarters in San Jose, California.