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Intel history
Intel company history timeline
In late 1969, when a Japanese calculator manufacturer, Busicom, asked the new company to design 12 custom chips for one of its products, the innovative Intel team came up with a groundbreaking solution: one chip that could do the work of 12.
It was purchased first by the American technology company Honeywell Incorporated in 1970 to replace the core memory technology in its computers.
1970: Company develops DRAM, dynamic RAM.
Following its DRAM success, Intel became a public company in 1971.
At its introduction in 1971, EPROM was a novelty without much of a market.
1971: Intel introduces the world's first microprocessor and goes public.
In 1972 management decided to enter the growing digital watch market by purchasing Microma.
The 8080, introduced in 1974, was the first truly general purpose microprocessor.
But Intel had no real understanding of consumers and sold the watchmaking company in 1978 at a loss of $15 million.
The 8086 was introduced in 1978 but took two years to achieve wide use, and, during this time, Motorola produced a competing chip (the 68000) that seemed to be selling faster.
One of Intel's most important developments in peripherals was the coprocessor, first introduced in 1980.
In an interview with the Harvard Business Review in 1980, Noyce remarked on the company's hiring policy, stating, 'we expect people to work hard.
1980: IBM chooses the Intel microprocessor for the first personal computer.
In 1980, the 4004 was followed by the 8080, which was chosen as the central processing unit of IBM’s first personal computer.
Such measures were not popular among all its workforce, but, by June 1983, all cuts had been restored and retroactive raises had been made. Thus, in 1981, when economic struggles again surfaced, instead of laying off more employees, Intel accelerated new product development with the '125 Percent Solution,' which asked exempt employees to work two extra hours per day, without pay, for six months.
In 1981 the American computer manufacturer International Business Machines (IBM) chose Intel’s 16-bit 8088 to be the CPU in its first mass-produced personal computer (PC). Intel also provided its microprocessors to other manufacturers that made PC “clones” that were compatible with IBM’s product.
Moreover, in December 1982, IBM paid $250 million for a 12 percent share of Intel, giving the company not only a strong capital boost, but also strong ties to the undisputed industry leader.
Such measures were not popular among all its workforce, but, by June 1983, all cuts had been restored and retroactive raises had been made.
In 1983, Esquire commissioned journalist Tom Wolfe to write a piece on Robert Noyce for its anniversary issue.
Fab 7, Intel's seventh wafer-fabrication plant, opened in 1983 only to face two years of troubled operations before reaching full capacity.
1983: Revenues exceed $1 billion for the first time.
By the end of the century, Intel and compatible chips from companies like AMD were found in every PC except Apple Inc.’s Macintosh, which had used CPUs from Motorola since 1984.
That same year Intel introduced the erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) chip, which was the company’s most successful product line until 1985.
IBM would eventually increase its stake to 20 percent before selling its Intel stock in 1987.
While competitors claimed that Intel simply gave away its DRAM market, Moore told Business Week in 1988 that the company deliberately focused on microprocessors as the least cyclical field in which to operate.
In 1989 Intel introduced the 80486, a chip Business Week heralded as 'a veritable mainframe-on-a-chip.' The 486 included 1.2 million transistors and the first built-in math coprocessor, and was 50 times faster than the 4004, the first microprocessor.
In order to increase consumer brand awareness, in 1991 Intel began subsidizing computer advertisements on the condition that the ads included the company’s “Intel inside” label.
In 1992, the company's Intel Products Group introduced network, communications, and personal conferencing products for retail sale directly to PC users.
1992: Net income tops $1 billion for the first time.
The Federal Trade Commission conducted a two-year investigation of Intel's practices and did not recommend criminal charges against the company, but two rival companies--Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Cyrix Corp.--filed antitrust lawsuits against Intel in 1993.
By 1995 the company was selling more than 10 million motherboards to PC makers, about 40 percent of the overall PC market.
1996: Revenues surpass $20 billion, net income exceeds $5 billion.
In 1997, Time magazine named Intel CEO Andy Grove its Man of the Year.
With the following year came the launch of the Celeron processor, which was designed specifically for the value PC desktop sector, a rapidly growing segment of the market ever since the early 1997 debut of a sub-$1,000 PC from Compaq.
Craig Barrett, who succeeded Grove as Intel CEO in 1998, was able to close that gap.
Intel also entered the market for e-commerce services, rapidly building up the largest business-to-business e-commerce site in the world, with $1 billion per month in online sales by mid-1999.
After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed.
Later in 2000 came the debut of the next generation processor for the early 21st century, the Itanium, the company's first 64-bit processor, which was initially designed to meet the needs of powerful Internet servers.
2000: The first Intel 1-gigahertz processor hits the market.
Intel’s groundbreaking achievements continue in the new century.In January 2006, the company announced it had designed what is believed to be the fi rst fully functional SRAM (static random access memory) chip using 45-nanometer (nm) logic technology.
On June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel’s XScale assets was announced.
The move was intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses, and the acquisition completed on November 9, 2006.
In 2008, Intel spun off key assets of a solar startup business effort to form an independent company, SpectraWatt Inc.
Although businesses still bought most PCs, the higher-performance Pentium machines made it possible for consumers to use PCs for multimedia graphical applications such as games that required more processing power. For example, the 8088 found in the first IBM PC had 29,000 transistors, while the 80386 unveiled four years later included 275,000, and the Core 2 Quad introduced in 2008 had more than 800,000,000 transistors.
In 2009 Intel also paid AMD $1.25 billion to settle a decades-long legal dispute in which AMD accused Intel of pressuring PC makers not to use the former’s chips.
On August 19, 2010, Intel announced that it planned to purchase McAfee, a manufacturer of computer security technology.
On August 30, 2010, Intel and Infineon Technologies announced that Intel would acquire Infineon’s Wireless Solutions business.
In March 2011, Intel bought most of the assets of Cairo-based SySDSoft.
April 2011: Intel began a pilot project with ZTE Corporation to produce smartphones using the Intel Atom processor for China’s domestic market.
On October 1, 2011, Intel reached a deal to acquire Telmap, an Israeli-based navigation software company.
The purchase price was $7.68 billion, and the companies said that if the deal were approved, new products would be released early in 2011.
However, as of 2011, SpectraWatt has filed for bankruptcy.
The acquisition of a Spanish natural language recognition startup named Indisys was announced on September 13, 2013.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in October 2013 and Intel is part of the coalition of public and private organisations that also includes Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
Finding itself with excess fab capacity after the failure of the Ultrabook to gain market traction and with PC sales declining, in 2013 Intel reached a foundry agreement to produce chips for Altera using 14-nm process.
The following year Brian Krzanich became CEO. In 2019 chief financial officer Bob Swan became CEO, and Intel ranked 43 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest American companies.
For a full explanation of these non-GAAP measures, see "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" in our 2021 Form 10-K
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Intel competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM | 1911 | $62.8B | 270,000 | 3,735 |
| Dell | 1984 | $95.6B | 165,000 | 132 |
| HP | 1939 | $53.6B | 53,000 | 317 |
| Texas Instruments | 1930 | $15.6B | 29,888 | 314 |
| Amd | 1969 | $25.8B | 15,500 | 570 |
| NVIDIA | 1993 | $130.5B | 18,100 | 1,256 |
| Microchip Technology | 1989 | $7.6B | 19,500 | 133 |
| Synopsys | 1986 | $6.1B | 15,001 | 40 |
| Xilinx | 1984 | $3.1B | 4,891 | - |
| Adobe | 1982 | $21.5B | 11,847 | 961 |
Intel history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Intel, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Intel. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Intel. 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 Intel. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Intel and its employees or that of Zippia.
Intel may also be known as or be related to INTEL CORPORATION RETIREE MEDICAL PLAN, Intel, Intel Corporation and N M Electronics (1968).