Intel
The integrated-device manufacturer that defined the era it was about to lose.
Latest filing on file · 2025-12-27
Overview
Business model and origins
Silicon memory chips (DRAM) were the future of computing storage; Noyce (co-inventor of the integrated circuit) and Moore (of Moore's Law) founded Intel to manufacture them at scale.
Origin
Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore left Fairchild Semiconductor — the most important semiconductor company before Intel — to found Intel in 1968 with Andy Grove as employee #3. The early business was DRAM chips. The strategic pivot came in 1971 when Intel delivered the first commercial microprocessor (the 4004) to Japanese calculator company Busicom. The 8080 (1974) and the IBM PC contract (1981) established Intel's dominance. In 1985 Grove made the most consequential strategic decision in semiconductor history: exit DRAM entirely, bet everything on microprocessors. The x86 architecture became the standard for personal computing for 40 years. Intel's decline — from the 2010s onward — is equally instructive: manufacturing process leadership ceded to TSMC while AMD caught up on architecture.