U.S. private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners and American chipmaker Broadcom, part of the firm's portfolio, apparently tendered a roughly 2 trillion yen ($17.9 billion) bid. That is on the high end of estimates of the memory business' value.

Shareholders greenlighted a spinoff of the business, to be called Toshiba Memory, at an extraordinary meeting Thursday. The Japanese conglomerate plans to sell a majority stake in the new entity to fill the hole in its finances left by nuclear unit Westinghouse Electric's bankruptcy filing.

Toshiba is the world's second-largest memory chip manufacturer by market share, behind only Samsung Electronics, so the sale has drawn keen interest. Around 10 bidders -- including peers such as U.S.-based Western Digital, a hard-drive maker that partners with Toshiba on memory, and South Korea's SK Hynix -- have stepped forward.

Silver Lake likely anticipates synergies with tech group Dell Technologies, another of its investment holdings, while Broadcom is after chips for commercial telecommunications equipment.