Micron Technology will buy bankrupt Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc. for an estimated 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion), the Nikkei newspaper said.

As much as 140 billion yen of the acquisition price will be used to pay Elpida’s debts, and about 70 percent of the Tokyo-based company’s liabilities won’t be repaid, the Nikkei reported without saying where it got the information.

Micron will invest 100 billion yen in Elpida facilities, including its plant in Hiroshima, to boost output of dynamic random-access memory chips, the report said.

Acquiring Elpida would double Micron’s share of the global market for DRAM — the most widely used memory chips in personal computers —to about 24 percent. That would help the Boise company vie with industry leader Samsung Electronics Co. while giving it greater control over supply gluts that have caused it to report four straight quarterly losses amid falling prices.

Dan Francisco, a spokesman for Micron, declined comment on the report. Phone calls to Elpida weren’t immediately answered.