We all have a curiosity to know who is the founder of a particular company. In this article, we will list down the founders of leading VLSI Companies (Semiconductor Companies) along with their founding year and location of headquarters. It also highlights a few major acquisitions by and/or of the semiconductor companies.
| Company | Founders | Year Founded | Headquarters |
| Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) | Jerry Sanders, Edwin Turney, Jack Gifford, Larry Stenger, Frank Botte, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jim Giles | 1969 | Santa Clara, California, United States |
| Analog Devices | Ray Stata and Matthew Lorber | 1965 | Wilmington, Massachusetts, United States |
| Apple Inc. | Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne | 1976 | Apple Park Way, Cupertino, California, United States |
| Arm Ltd. (arm)* | Larry Tesler, Jamie Urquhart, Mike Muller, Tudor Brown, Lee Smith, John Biggs, Harry Oldham, Dave Howard, Pete Harrod, Harry Meekings, Al Thomas, Andy Merritt, David Seal | 1990 | Cambridge, England, UK |
| Cadence Design Systems | A merger of Solomon Design Automation and ECAD | 1988 | San Jose, California, United States |
| Fujitsu Limited | Parent Organization: Furukawa Group | 1935 | Minato, Tokyo, Japan |
| Hitachi | Namihei Odaira | 1908 | Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan |
| Infineon Technologies** | Parent Company: Siemens AG | 1999 | Neubiberg, Germany |
| Intel Corporation^^ | Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce | 1968 | Santa Clara, California, United States |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)*** | Charles Ranlett Flint | 1911 | Armonk, New York, United States |
| MediaTek | Parent Company: United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) | 1997 | Hsinchu, Taiwan |
| Mentor Graphics**** | Tom Bruggere | 1981 | Wilsonville, Oregon, United States |
| Microchip Technology# | 1989 | Chandler, Arizona, United States | |
| NEC## | Kunihiko Iwadare and Takeshiro Maeda | 1899 | Shiba, Minato, Tokyo, Japan |
| NXP Semiconductors### | Parent Company: Philips Semiconductors | 1953 | Eindhoven, Netherlands |
| Nvidia Corporation | Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem | 1993 |
Santa Clara, California, United States |
| ON Semiconductor^ | Parent Company: Motorola Semiconductor | 1999 | Phoenix, Arizona, United States |
| Renesas Electronics Corporation | A merger of Semiconductor unit of Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and NEC Electronics | 2002 | Tokyo, Japan |
| Samsung Electronics | Established as an industrial part of Samsung Group | 1969 | Suwon, South Korea |
| Sony Semiconductor | Parent Company: Sony Corporation | 2015 | Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan |
| STMicroelectronics | A merger of SGS Microelettronica and Thomson Semiconducteurs | 1987 | Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, Switzerland |
| Synopsys | David Gregory, Aart de Geus | 1986 | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) | Morris Chang | 1987 | Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan |
| Texas Instruments^^^ | Cecil H. Green, J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott, Patrick E. Haggerty | 1951 | Dallas, Texas, United States |
| Qualcomm | Irwin Mark Jacobs, Adelia A Coffman, Andrew Viterbi, Klein Gilhousen, Andrew Cohen, Harvey White, Franklin Antonio | 1985 | San Diego, California, United States |
| Xilinx | James V. Barnett II, Ross Freeman, Bernie Vonderschmitt | 1984 | San Jose, California, United States |
- *Arm Ltd. is owned by SoftBank Group since 2016.
- **Infineon Technologies bought Cypress Semiconductor Corporation in 2020.
- ***Charles Ranlett Flint founded Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) in the year 1911 that was renamed “International Business Machines” in 1924.
- ****Mentor Graphics is acquired by Siemens in 2017.
- #Microchip Technology bought Atmel in 2016, and Microsemi Corporation in 2018.
- ##Kunihiko Iwadare and Takeshiro Maeda established Nippon Electric Limited in 1899 which was rebranded as NEC in 1983
- ###NXP Semiconductors acquired Freescale Semiconductor in 2015.
- ^On Semiconductor acquired Fairchild Semiconductor in 2016.
- ^^Intel acquired Altera Corporation (FPGA) in 2015 and NetSpeed (Network-on-Chip) in 2018.
- ^^^Texas Instruments acquired National Semiconductor in 2011.
Note: All the information are collected from the available resources on the internet. Though we have verified all the information from multiple resources and believe that the information provided above are correct, we do not claim it.