SanDisk Corporation (originally SunDisk) is an American semiconductor company based in Milpitas, California, founded in 1988 by Eli Harari, Sanjay Mehrotra, and Jack Yuan to develop solid-state storage that could retain data without power. The company pioneered flash memory, producing the first flash-based solid-state drive (SSD) for IBM in 1991, and renamed itself SanDisk in 1995 before going public on Nasdaq (ticker SNDK). In 2005, it entered the digital audio market with the Sansa e100 MP3 player, quickly becoming the second-largest player in the US behind Apple, and expanded through major acquisitions like M-Systems, Pliant, and Fusion-io. Co-founder Eli Harari received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2014, and in May 2016, Western Digital acquired SanDisk for roughly $16 billion. Following that acquisition, Western Digital announced in October 2023 plans to spin off its flash storage business back into an independent public company under the SanDisk name, with preparations officially beginning in October 2024.