Broadcom history
Broadcom company history timeline
Broadcom Corporation was founded by professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas from UCLA in 1991.
Broadcom got its first big break in 1993 with a contract from Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. of Norcross, Georgia, which was supplying TV set-top boxes for Time Warner Corp.'s experimental cable system in Orlando, Florida.
In the fall of 1994 it began shipping volume production quantities of chips using the production capacities of American Microsystems Inc. of Pocatello, Idaho, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
In 1994 the company's revenues exceeded $5 million.
Revenues were expected to increase fourfold in 1995.
In 1995, the company moved from its Westwood, Los Angeles, office to Irvine, California.
As Internet usage quickly expanded in 1996, regional Bell operating companies were competing with cable operators to become the dominant providers of Internet access.
For 1997 Broadcom reported a net loss of $1.2 million on revenues of $37 million.
Extremely popular with investors since going public in 1998, the company has used its stock to acquire smaller high-tech companies and integrate their technology.
For 1998 Broadcom forecast it would provide $30-$45 worth of chips for two million digital cable set-top boxes.
The company went public in 1998 and made a kick-off start with serving more than fifteen countries around the world.
In 1998, Broadcom became a public company on the NASDAQ exchange (ticker symbol: BRCM) and employs about 11,750 people worldwide in more than 15 countries.
By January 1999 Broadcom's two founders were billionaires.
Rumors began circulating in the summer of 1999 that Broadband cofounder Henry Nicholas would purchase the California Angels and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks from the Walt Disney Company.
Broadcom continued acquiring companies in 2000.
In 2003 the Free Software Foundation accused Broadcom of not complying with the GNU General Public License as Broadcom distributed GPL code in a driver for its 802.11g router chipset without making that code public.
On May 18, 2006, amid media reports about options practices, Broadcom said it had started an internal review of its stock options grants.
On July 14, 2006, Broadcom estimated it would have to subtract $750 million from earnings due to stock options irregularities.
On September 8, 2006, the company announced the amount was at least $1.5 billion, "and could be substantially more." On December 18, 2006, the SEC opened a formal investigation of Broadcom's options practices.
On May 15, 2008, Broadcom co-founder and CTO Henry Samueli resigned as chairman of the board, and took a leave of absence as Chief Technology Officer.
On April 26, 2009, Broadcom settled its four-year legal battle with Qualcomm over wireless and other patents.
August 6, 2009: Avago completes IPO on NASDAQ, stock symbol: AVGO
In 2009, the company was listed in the Fortune 500 and by this time Broadcom hired more than 11,000 employers.
Achieved Fiscal Year 2010 revenue of $2.1 billion;
The closure of these businesses began on September 19, 2011.
As of 2011, Broadcom was among Gartner's Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by revenue.
327 on the Fortune 500, climbing 17 places from its 2012 ranking of No.
In 2012, Broadcom's total revenue was $8.01 billion.
As part of the settlement, Qualcomm paid $891 million in cash to Broadcom over a four-year period ending June 2013.
At the end of 2013, the company’s annual revenue summed up to a massive figure of $8.01 billion with its ranking coming down to 327 in Fortune 500.
On June 2, 2014, Broadcom announced intentions to exit the cellular baseband business.
On May 28, 2015 chip maker Avago Technologies Ltd. agreed to buy Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion in cash and stock.
After all the legal works were completed by February 2016, Cypress Semiconductor bought Broadcom’s entire IoT sector in May 2016.
In May 2016 Cypress Semiconductor announced that it will acquire Broadcom Corporation's full portfolio of IoT products for $550 million.
Back in 2017, Broadcom filed an array of patent suits against manufacturers of smart TVs.
On January 17, 2018, it was reported that the FTC had investigating Broadcom for several months in regard to its anti-competitive tactics while negotiating with customers.
According to the records of 2018, the company’s annual revenue is $20.84 billion.
In 2018, the United States International Trade Commission ruled against Broadcom, finding that two manufacturers did not infringe on patents owned by Broadcom.
The Leichtman Research Group calculated that the largest pay TV providers in the United States – representing about 95% of the market – lost about 4,915,000 net video subscribers in 2019.
In 2020, Broadcom sued Netflix over multiple patent infringements.
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Broadcom competitors
| Company Name | Founded Date | Revenue | Employee Size | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xilinx | 1984 | $3.1B | 4,891 | - |
| Intel | 1968 | $54.2B | 121,100 | 3,978 |
| Amd | 1969 | $23.6B | 15,500 | 336 |
| Texas Instruments | 1930 | $20.0B | 29,888 | 24 |
| Rambus | 1990 | $454.8M | 819 | 11 |
| Maxim Integrated | 1983 | $2.6B | 7,100 | - |
| IBM | 1911 | $60.5B | 270,000 | 315 |
| Librato, Inc. | - | $12.3B | 63,800 | - |
| Cypress | 2009 | $2.2B | 5,871 | 31 |
| Netgear | 1996 | $932.5M | 1,008 | 2 |
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Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Broadcom, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Broadcom. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Broadcom. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Broadcom. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Broadcom and its employees or that of Zippia.
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