Credo went public at $10 a share selling something few investors thought about: the links between servers. Its chips push data down copper and optical connections at high speed with less power. One product, the Active Electrical Cable, put a Credo chip inside the cable itself. When it listed in January 2022, data centers were racing from 100-gigabit links to 400 and 800. AI soon made that race much faster.

Four Years of Design

Credo was founded in 2008. From 2008 to 2012, its engineers built a low-power design for SerDes, the circuits that turn data into fast serial signals and back. It began selling in 2013. Bill Brennan, a semiconductor veteran, became chief executive in 2013. Credo sold chips, licensed its designs, and built complete cables. The bet was that bandwidth would keep doubling and power would become the limit.

Ten Dollars, Then AI

Credo priced its offering at $10 a share in January 2022 and listed on Nasdaq under CRDO. The parent is a Cayman Islands holding company, with offices in North America and Asia. Big cloud companies then built huge AI clusters, wired together with fast cables. Demand for Credo's cables climbed, and its shares rose far above the offer price. Credo still trades on Nasdaq as CRDO.

Cover: Suspension Bridge at Minneapolis, No. 1519 from the series "Among the Bluff Scenery of the Upper Mississippi", Henry Hamilton Bennett. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a suspension bridge (cables that carry the load).