Every flash memory card needs a small chip to manage it, and in 2005 many of those chips came from Silicon Motion. Its controllers went into storage products sold by Lexar, Samsung, SanDisk and Sony. It also made chips for MP3 players and PC cameras. The company had roots in both Taiwan and California. When it filed to list on Nasdaq in 2005, cameras and music players were all moving their memory onto flash.

Controllers Behind the Brands

Silicon Motion was fabless. It designed chips and paid foundries to make them. The company combined two predecessors: Silicon Motion, Inc. in California, and Feiya Technology in Taiwan, later renamed Silicon Motion, Inc. Its customers were the device makers and their contract manufacturers, which put Silicon Motion chips inside products under their own brands. Wallace Kou served as president and chief executive.

Ten Fifty an ADS

Silicon Motion priced its IPO at $10.50 per American depositary share in June 2005 and listed on the Nasdaq National Market as SIMO. The offering raised about $70 million. The company later became a major supplier of controllers for solid-state drives. In 2022 MaxLinear agreed to buy it, then walked away from the deal in 2023. Silicon Motion is still public on Nasdaq.

Cover: Animal Locomotion, Plate 469, Eadweard Muybridge. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a photograph of motion (Silicon Motion).