Intel Corporation

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel in July 1968, having left Fairchild Semiconductor — the legendary Silicon Valley company where they had both worked and which had itself been founded by refugees from Shockley Semiconductor. The pattern of talented engineers leaving established companies to found new ones was becoming the defining dynamic of Silicon Valley. Noyce had co-invented the integrated circuit. Moore had identified the exponential improvement trend in semiconductors that would bear his name. Their initial investor, Arthur Rock, raised $2.5 million in two days.

Gordon Moore published a paper in 1965 observing that the number of transistors on a microchip doubled approximately every two years, while the cost halved. He predicted this trend would continue. "Moore's Law" — as it became known — proved to be one of the most reliable predictions in the history of technology, holding for over fifty years. Intel's entire business strategy was built around the predictable improvement curve that Moore had identified: make chips faster and cheaper at a rate that customers could anticipate and plan around.

Intel introduced the 4004 in 1971 — the world's first commercially available microprocessor: a complete CPU on a single chip. It had been commissioned by a Japanese calculator company, Busicom, which needed a chip for its calculator. Intel engineer Ted Hoff proposed putting the entire computing logic on one chip rather than multiple chips. The 4004 contained 2,300 transistors. A modern Intel processor contains tens of billions. The 4004 made the personal computer possible in principle; a decade of further development made it possible in practice.

IBM chose Intel's 8088 processor for the IBM PC in 1981 — the decision that defined the personal computer industry. IBM's open architecture allowed other manufacturers to clone the PC using Intel chips. The "Wintel" ecosystem — Windows operating system on Intel processors — became the dominant computing platform for three decades. Intel's revenues grew from $800 million in 1980 to $33 billion in 2000 as personal computer adoption spread globally. The company that had made a calculator chip for a Japanese client had become the engine of the information age.

Intel spent years falling behind in semiconductor manufacturing, failing to move to smaller transistor sizes at the pace that Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung had achieved. Competitors including Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm were having their chips made by TSMC using processes more advanced than Intel's own factories. CEO Pat Gelsinger, who returned to Intel in 2021, announced an ambitious plan to rebuild Intel's manufacturing capability and become a contract chip manufacturer — directly competing with TSMC. The programme required $100 billion in investment and its success remained uncertain. Intel's stock fell 60% between 2021 and 2023 as investors waited to see whether the comeback was real.