Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co., the top maker of memory products for computers, on Friday was confirmed to have made a roughly $3 million investment in Taiwanese chipmaker JMicron Technology Corp., according to reports.
Kingston got the green light from JMicron’s board to make the investment yesterday, according to a report on tech website legitreviews.com.
JMicron is a maker of controller chips for solid state drives, which are made up of flash memory and have no moving parts.
In the second half of last year, Kingston started to use JMicron’s chips in its solid state drives.
The company doesn’t comment on any of its investments, a spokesperson for Kingston said.
A few years ago, Kingston teamed up with Intel Corp. to make solid state drives for consumers.
Solid state drives are better at some tasks than traditional spinning disk drives.
Kingston markets them as “boot up” drives for consumers that allow older computers to run faster.
It’s not unusual for Kingston to take a stake in some of its suppliers.
Last year, the company invested some $200 million in Japan’s top chipmaker, Elpida Memory Inc.
Before that, it paid roughly $60 million for shares of Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Corp.
Kingston also holds a stake in Taiwanese memory chipmaker Phison Electronics Corp.
Kingston has roughly half the market for memory modules, which are circuit boards loaded with memory chips, that go into computers.
It also makes flash memory products for consumers, including portable drives and cards for cameras and cell phones.
