At its peak in 2000, Exodus was worth about $32 billion, and it made its money renting rooms full of other people's computers. Its data centers held the servers of the web's busiest companies, wired to fast networks and kept cool, powered, and guarded around the clock. When it filed to go public in early 1998, most companies still kept their servers in a closet down the hall. Exodus bet they would rather hand that job to someone else.

Servers Need a Home

K.B. Chandrasekhar and B.V. Jagadeesh, two engineers who came to the United States from India, started the company in 1994. They saw a simple need. Web companies were growing faster than they could build server rooms. Exodus built the rooms for them, with backup power, cooling, and links to many networks, and charged rent by the rack. A customer could add servers as fast as its traffic grew.

Eighty-Four Percent, Then Chapter 11

Exodus priced its IPO at $15 a share on March 19, 1998, above a range it had already raised. The stock closed the first day at $27.63, up 84 percent. It became one of the hottest stocks of the bubble. When dot-com customers went broke, Exodus was left with costly data centers and heavy debt. It filed for bankruptcy in September 2001. Cable & Wireless bought most of its data centers that winter.

Cover: The Submersion of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea, Titian. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus).