Broadcom began with a UCLA professor and his former student, and its name survived a $37 billion takeover. In 1998 the race to bring broadband into homes depended on chips that could send data over cable TV lines and phone wires. Broadcom designed many of them. Its chips sat inside cable modems, digital set-top boxes, and networking gear. Broadcom owned no factories. It designed chips and paid others to make them. It went public in April 1998.

A System on a Chip

Henry Samueli, a UCLA professor, and Henry Nicholas, his former student, founded Broadcom in 1991. The bet was that broadband would need complete systems on a chip, with many functions combined in one piece of silicon. That approach cut costs for equipment makers. It made Broadcom a key supplier for cable modems and Ethernet. Broadcom also built a reputation for hiring top engineers and for aggressive competition.

Bought, Then Renamed Broadcom

Broadcom priced its offering at $24 a share in April 1998, and the stock soared with the broadband boom. It grew into one of the largest chip companies in the world, adding Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and networking chips. In 2016 Avago Technologies acquired Broadcom for about $37 billion. It was one of the largest deals in the history of the chip industry. The combined company took the Broadcom name.

Cover: Lightning, Charles Courtry. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for lightning (high-speed signals).