IVAC

Intevac, Inc.

A maker of high-precision vacuum machinery that coats the metal platters inside hard disk drives, Intevac also once built digital night-vision sensors for the U.S. military. Founded in 1991 as a spin-off from electronics firm Varian Associates, its name fuses "integrated" and "vacuum" — a nod to the sealed chambers where its thin-film sputtering systems work. Seagate, one of the biggest names in data storage, bought the company outright in 2025.