Toshiba 東芝

Toshiba's roots trace to 1875, when Hisashige Tanaka founded a telegraph equipment workshop in Tokyo that grew into Tanaka Seizo-sho (later Shibaura Seisaku-sho), and to 1890, when Hakunetsu-sha became Japan's first manufacturer of incandescent light bulbs. The two companies merged in 1939 to form Tokyo Shibaura Electric, which was renamed Toshiba Corporation in 1978.

Over the 20th century Toshiba became a diversified maker of home appliances, semiconductors — including inventing NAND flash memory — laptops, and heavy infrastructure such as power plants and elevators. After years of accounting scandals and financial difficulty, Toshiba accepted a buyout by a Japan Industrial Partners-led consortium in 2023 and delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange after 74 years, continuing operations as a privately held company.