On September 16, Infineon announced the sale of its NOR Flash and F-RAM businesses to Winbond Electronics for USD 1.12 billion. The two parties plan to complete the transaction in the second half of 2027.
Winbond will continue to run the acquired business as an independent entity headquartered in San Jose, USA, reviving a well-known name familiar to many veteran semiconductor professionals: Spansion.
As an independent company, Spansion ceased to exist after merging into Cypress in 2015. In 2003, AMD and Fujitsu combined their respective flash memory businesses to launch the Spansion brand. Spansion later grew into a major player in the NOR Flash market. It merged with Cypress in 2015. In 2020, Infineon acquired Cypress at an enterprise value of roughly EUR 9 billion. Now this memory asset is being spun off again and transferred to Winbond.
After a full circle, Spansion is back. Chiao Yu-Chun, Chairman and CEO of Winbond Electronics, stated that Spansion was a pioneer in the memory industry with numerous innovations and technological breakthroughs. Winbond is honored to carry on this legacy under the Spansion name once again.
What Businesses Is Infineon Selling?
Infineon is divesting only NOR Flash and F-RAM, not its entire memory portfolio. SRAM, HYPERRAM, nvSRAM, and SONOS-based radiation-hardened memory will be retained. These products continue to target automotive, industrial, infrastructure, aerospace and defense markets.
NOR Flash is mainly used to store and directly execute program code, so it has long been deployed in automotive, industrial control, communications infrastructure and various embedded devices.
F-RAM adopts a different technical route. It uses ferroelectric materials for non-volatile memory, featuring fast write speeds, high write endurance, and data retention after power loss. It is suitable for frequent status logging, metering data recording and critical parameter storage.
Most of Infineon’s NOR Flash heritage traces back to Spansion. In 2003, AMD and Fujitsu formed FASL by consolidating flash operations, followed by the launch of the Spansion brand. Cypress completed its merger with Spansion in 2015.
F-RAM mainly came from an earlier Cypress acquisition. In 2012, Cypress bought Ramtron for approximately USD 109 million and added F-RAM to its non-volatile memory lineup. In 2020, Cypress was fully acquired by Infineon.
Why Does Winbond Make This Acquisition?
NOR Flash is Winbond’ s core business.
According to Omdia, the global NOR Flash market reached about USD 3.4 billion in 2025. Winbond held the No.1 position with a 23% market share; GigaDevice and Macronix each accounted for 17%, while Infineon took around 11%. Combined, Winbond plus Infineon’ s relevant business would reach roughly 34% market share.
Notably, Winbond made this acquisition on solid financial performance. In Q2 2026, Winbond’s consolidated revenue hit NT$59.843 billion, up 184.7% YoY, with an operating gross margin of 66.2%. Net profit attributable to parent stood at NT$24.317 billion, EPS NT$5.4. Growth was mainly driven by AI-related demand. Customized memory business contributed 53% of quarterly revenue, with blended average selling price rising nearly 100% QoQ. Flash business represented 33% of revenue, with 24nm and 32nm SLC NAND delivering remarkable revenue growth.
The growth momentum continued into Q3. Winbond reported consolidated revenue of NT$26.773 billion in July, +291.55% YoY, and NT$27.309 billion in August, +289.43% YoY. Cumulative revenue for the first 8 months of 2026 reached NT$152.178 billion, up 177.39% YoY.
Winbond stated that Infineon’ s memory business boasts over 30 years of experience, a large customer base across automotive, industrial and infrastructure sectors, plus established supply chains and R&D systems.
For these industrial-grade applications, customer qualification cycles are extremely long. Therefore acquiring a mature business is far faster than building these customer relationships from scratch. Reviving the Spansion brand also preserves existing brand recognition for the business.
Where Will Infineon Reinvest the Proceeds?
Infineon did not disclose revenue or profit figures for these two business lines in its announcement. It only stated it will further refocus its product portfolio and capital allocation on core growth areas.
The company’ s investment priorities in recent years are clear. Automotive remains one of its largest business segments, with ongoing expansion of SiC, GaN and IGBT power devices. Power demands from AI data centers represent a new growth driver. In August, Infineon acquired C2i Semiconductors to strengthen power management for AI data centers. It also recently purchased Marvell’s automotive Ethernet business and AMS-OSRAM’s sensor division.
Currently, NOR Flash suffers from severe supply shortage and sharp price hikes. Divesting this business at this stage to concentrate on power and automotive sectors represents a sound strategic move for Infineon.
Post time: Oct-12-2026