Former Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) president Charles Kau (高啟全) has reportedly quit his job at China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光) after his five-year contract expired.
Kau joined Tsinghua Unigroup in 2015 after retiring from Nanya Technology, the biggest DRAM chipmaker in Taiwan.
He was the first top executive from a Taiwanese memorychip maker to join a Chinese firm financially backed by Beijing, and had raised concern that he would help China catch up with Taiwan in building its memorychip industry.
Photo: CNA
Last year, Tsinghua Unigroup appointed Kau as chief executive officer of its newly formed unit, Yangtze Memory Technology Corp (長江存儲), aiming to develop and produce China’s first 3D NAND flash memory chips.
Yangtze Memory last month announced that its latest 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips have been adopted by customers for their solid-state-drive (SSD) products, according to a statement posted on its Web site.
Kau confirmed that he did not renew his contract with Tsinghua Unigroup when it expired, Central News Agency reported yesterday.
The report quoted Kau as saying that he had completed his mission at the firm and had decided to pursue his own career, declining to reveal his next move.
Kau could not be reached by the Taipei Times for comment as of press time yesterday.
Kau helped found Nanya Technology in 1995. Prior to joining Nanya, he worked at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Intel Corp, Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc and Macronix International Co (旺宏電子).
In June, he was tapped by Wiwynn Corp (緯穎科技) to serve as an independent board director at the company, a subsidiary of Wistron Corp (緯創).
Wiwynn supplies cloud-based servers and solutions to global data center operators, such as Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
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