Shares of Virident rival Fusion-io were up 20 percent at midday, with analysts saying the storage drive maker was a likely acquisition target for Seagate, one of the backers of Virident. Seagate and Western Digital dominate the hard disk-drive market, and have been trying to expand their presence in the faster and more energy efficient solid-state drives (SSDs) market as demand slows in the traditional PC market.
Western Digital bought troubled SSD maker Stec for $340 million in June to become one of the top players in the flash drive market. The fact that Western Digital had to pay so much for suggests that it was involved in a bidding war with Seagate.
Virident has confirmed that Western Digital was not the only company to bid for Virident.
Virident was backed by strategic investors Intel and Cisco which signed a deal to develop and distribute flash-based hardware and software to Seagate's customers, in January.