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58-586: The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, Duc Haba, Dwayne Nesmith, and Robbie Vann-Adibé as Silicon Valley Internet Partners (SVIP). It was one of the first consulting firms to attempt to integrate the disparate disciplines of strategy, 'creative' (design), and technology into a single value proposition and project approach. Such blended multi-disciplinary approaches have since become common. With investment from Mohr Davidow Ventures , Trident Capital , and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers , SVIP grew rapidly. Robert Gett , from Cambridge Technology Partners ,

116-475: A lower cost and with greater performance and reliability, making other transistors obsolete. One such casualty was Philco 's transistor division, whose newly built $ 40 million plant to make their germanium PADT process transistors became nonviable. Within a few years, every other transistor company paralleled or licensed the Fairchild planar process. Hoerni's 2N1613 was a major success, with Fairchild licensing

174-480: A new CEO other than Noyce. In response, Noyce discreetly planned a new company with Gordon Moore , the head of R&D. They left Fairchild to found Intel in 1968 and were soon joined by Andrew Grove and Leslie L. Vadász , who took with them the revolutionary MOS Silicon Gate Technology (SGT), recently created in the Fairchild R&;D Laboratory by Federico Faggin who also designed the Fairchild 3708,

232-566: A superfund. Superfund site cleanup ended in 1998. In 1997, the reconstituted Fairchild Semiconductor was reborn as an independent company, based in South Portland, Maine , with Kirk Pond as CEO. On March 11, 1997, National Semiconductor Corporation announced the US$ 550 million sale of a reconstituted Fairchild to the management of Fairchild with the backing of Sterling LLC, a unit of Citicorp Venture Capital. Fairchild carried with it what

290-484: A team of Fairchild managers in preparation to defect to Plessey , a British company. Lamond had recruited Sporck to be his own boss. When negotiations with Plessey broke down over stock options, Lamond and Sporck succumbed to Widlar's and Talbert's (who were already employed at National Semiconductor) suggestion that they look to National Semiconductor. Widlar and Talbert had earlier left Fairchild to join Molectro, which

348-453: A three-year term. On April 13, 2005, Fairchild announced appointment of Mark Thompson as CEO of the corporation. Thompson would also be President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors of Fairchild Semiconductor International. He originally joined Fairchild as Executive Vice President, Manufacturing and Technology Group. On March 15, 2006, Fairchild Semiconductor announced that Kirk P. Pond would retire as Chairman at

406-534: Is focused on early stage investments in the "consumer, enterprise, hard tech and fintech" sectors. The firm raised US $ 600 million for its 18th fund, KP XVIII, in January 2019. In March 2008 Kleiner Perkins announced the iFund , a $ 100 million venture capital investment initiative that funds concepts related to the iPhone, and doubled that investment a year later. It was reported in April 2008 that Kleiner Perkins

464-599: Is headquartered in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley , with offices in San Francisco and Shanghai , China. The New York Times described Kleiner Perkins as "perhaps Silicon Valley 's most famous venture firm". The Wall Street Journal called it one of the "largest and most established" venture capital firms and Dealbook named it "one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital providers." The firm

522-671: The 8008 8-bit microprocessor, Fairchild developed the Fairchild F8 8-bit microprocessor, which was according to the CPU Museum "in 1977 the F8 was the world's leading microprocessor in terms of CPU sales." In 1976, the company released the first video game system to use ROM cartridges, the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (or VES) later renamed Channel F , using the F8 microprocessor. The system

580-494: The Santa Clara Valley as well as early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies. Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund. Nevertheless, the firm was still active in this period. By 1996, Kleiner Perkins had funded around 260 companies a total of $ 880 million. Beyond

638-625: The 'reproductive' labor of expressing Navajo culture, rather than merely for wages." This claim was based on the opinion that circuits of the electronic chips had a mere resemblance with the complex geometric patterns on the Navajo rugs. Paul Driscoll, the Shiprock plant manager, spoke of the "untapped wealth of natural characteristics of the Navajo...the inherent flexibility and dexterity of the Indians." Although highly successful during its operation,

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696-465: The California sites once a year, even though the semiconductor division earned most of the profits of the company. Fairchild's president at that time, John Carter, had used all the profits to fund acquisitions of unprofitable ventures. Noyce's position on Fairchild's executive staff was consistently compromised by Sherman Fairchild's faction. Charles E. Sporck was Noyce's operations manager. Sporck

754-499: The Fairchild Semiconductor division was started with plans to make silicon transistors at a time when germanium was still the most common material for semiconductor use. According to Sherman Fairchild, Noyce's impassioned presentation of his vision was the reason Sherman Fairchild had agreed to create the semiconductor division for the traitorous eight. Noyce advocated the use of silicon as substrate – since

812-520: The SGT for its memory development. Federico Faggin, frustrated, left Fairchild to join Intel in 1970 and design the first microprocessors using SGT. Among the investors of Intel were Hodgson and five of the founding members of Fairchild. Sherman Fairchild hired Lester Hogan , who was the head of Motorola semiconductor division. Hogan proceeded to hire another hundred managers from Motorola to entirely displace

870-719: The United States. Fairchild dominated the market in DTL, op-amps and mainframe computer custom circuits. In 1965, Fairchild opened a semiconductor assembly plant on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico. At its peak, the plant employed over a thousand Navajos, the majority of whom were women. In The Shiprock Dedication Commemorative Brochure released by the Fairchild company, the Diné (Navajo) women circuit makers were celebrated as "culture workers who produced circuits as part of

928-593: The acquisition of Impala Linear Corporation, based in San Jose, California, for approximately $ 6 million in stock and cash. Impala brought with it expertise in designing analog power management semiconductors for hand-held devices like laptops, MP3 players, cell phones, portable test equipment and PDAs. On January 9, 2004, Fairchild Semiconductor CEO Kirk Pond was appointed as a Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, elected by member banks to serve

986-448: The analog integrated circuit market, having introduced the first IC operational amplifiers , or "op-amps", Bob Widlar 's μA702 (in 1964) and μA709. In 1968, Fairchild introduced David Fullagar's μA741, which became the most popular IC op amp of all time. By 1965, Fairchild's process improvements had brought low-cost manufacturing to the semiconductor industry – making Fairchild nearly the only profitable semiconductor manufacturer in

1044-450: The basis of CMOS technology today. In 1963, Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass built CMOS MOSFET logic. In 1963, Fairchild hired Robert Widlar to design analog operational amplifiers using Fairchild's process. Since Fairchild's processes were optimized for digital circuits, Widlar collaborated with process engineer Dave Talbert. The collaboration resulted in two revolutionary products – μA702 and μA709. Hence, Fairchild dominated

1102-469: The company's annual stockholders' meeting on May 3, 2006. Pond would continue as a member of the company’s board of directors. Mark Thompson (then CEO) became Chairman. On September 1, 2007, New Jersey–based RF semiconductor supplier Anadigics acquired Fairchild Semiconductor's RF design team, located in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, for $ 2.4 million. In April 2011, Fairchild Semiconductor acquired TranSiC,

1160-520: The design across the industry. In 1960, Fairchild built a circuit with four transistors on a single wafer of silicon, thereby creating the first silicon integrated circuit ( Texas Instruments ' Jack Kilby had developed an integrated circuit made of germanium on September 12, 1958, and was awarded a U.S. patent , however Kilby's method was not scalable and the semiconductor industry adopted Fairchild's process to manufacture integrated circuits). The company grew from twelve to twelve thousand employees, and

1218-502: The digital integrated circuit market. Their first line of ICs was the "micrologic" resistor–transistor logic (RTL) line which was used in the Apollo Guidance Computer . It had the advantage of being extremely simple – each inverter consisted of just one transistor and two resistors. The logic family had many drawbacks that had made it marginal for commercial purposes, and not well suited for military applications:

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1276-589: The end of that year Viant reached a stock price of US$ 105 per share and a market capitalization of over $ 2 billion. Vann-Adibé left the firm in early 2000. The Dot com bust hit the company hard, forcing layoffs in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Employees later nicknamed each round based on their dates and impact, calling the Dec 7th round (10% cut) the "Pearl Harbor" round, while the March 2001 and 2002 rounds (40% cuts) were referred to as "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki". The company

1334-446: The firm has vigorously denied. On 27 March 2015, after a month-long trial, the jury found against Pao on all claims. In June 2015, Pao filed an appeal. In September 2015, Pao announced she would no longer appeal the jury verdict. In September 2018, Kleiner Perkins announced it was spinning out its digital growth team into a new independent firm. The firm announced its 19th fund on 31 January 2019 after raising $ 600 million. The fund

1392-486: The form of BTL memos before being published in 1957. At Shockley Semiconductor , Shockley had circulated the preprint of their article in December 1956 to all his senior staff, including Jean Hoerni , who would later invent the planar process in 1959 while at Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1948, Bardeen and Brattain patented at Bell Labs an insulated-gate transistor (IGFET) with an inversion layer, this concept forms

1450-427: The individual circuits. Noyce's invention was enabled by the planar process developed by Jean Hoerni. In turn, Hoerni's planar process was inspired by the surface passivation method developed at Bell Labs by Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick in 1955 and 1957. At Bell Labs, the importance of Frosch and Derick technique and transistors was immediately realized. Results of their work circulated around Bell Labs in

1508-472: The last of the original founders to leave, at which point the brain-drain of talents that had fueled the growth of the company was complete. A Fairchild advertisement of the time showed a collage of the logos of Silicon Valley with the annotation "We started it all". It was later, in 1971, Don Hoefler popularizated the name "Silicon Valley USA" in Electronic News . He notes he did not invent

1566-498: The logic could only tolerate about 100 millivolts of noise  – far too low for comfort. It was awhile before Fairchild relied on more robust designs, such as diode–transistor logic (DTL) which had much better noise margins. Sales due to Fairchild semiconductor division had doubled each year and by the mid-1960s comprised two-thirds of total sales of the parent company. In 1966, Fairchild's sales were second to those of Texas Instruments , followed in third place by Motorola . Noyce

1624-414: The management of Fairchild. The loss of these iconic executives, coupled with Hogan's displacement of Fairchild managers demoralized Fairchild and prompted the entire exodus of employees to found new companies. Many of the original founders, otherwise known as the "fairchildren", had left Fairchild in the 1960s to form companies that grew to prominence in the 1970s. Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were among

1682-498: The material costs would consist of sand and a few fine wires, the major cost would be in the manufacturing process. Noyce also expressed his belief that silicon semiconductors would herald the start of disposable appliances that, due to cheap electronic components, would not be repaired but merely discarded when worn out. Their first transistors were of the silicon mesa variety, innovative for their time, but exhibiting relatively poor reliability. Fairchild's first marketed transistor

1740-401: The name. See also Gregory Gromov and TechCrunch 2014 update of Hoefler's article. Hogan's action to hire from Motorola had Motorola file a lawsuit against Fairchild, which the court then decided in Fairchild's favor in 1973. Judge William Copple ruled that Fairchild's results were so unimpressive that it was impossible to assess damages "under any theory". Hogan was dismissed as president

1798-447: The next year, but remained as vice chairman. In 1973, Fairchild became the first company to produce a commercial charge-coupled device (CCD) following its invention at Bell Labs . Digital image sensors are still produced today at their descendant company, Fairchild Imaging. The CCD had a difficult birth, with the devastating effects on Fairchild of the 1973–75 recession that followed on the 1973 oil crisis . After Intel introduced

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1856-436: The order by resigning abruptly. Furthermore, Fairchild's DTL technology was being overtaken by Texas Instruments's faster TTL (transistor–transistor logic). While Noyce was considered the natural successor to Carter, the board decided not to promote him. Sherman Fairchild led the board to choose Richard Hodgson. Within a few months Hodgson was replaced by a management committee led by Noyce, while Sherman Fairchild looked for

1914-826: The original founders, notable members of the firm have included individuals such as John Doerr , Vinod Khosla , and Bill Joy . Colin Powell joined as a "strategic" partner in 2005, while Al Gore joined as a partner in 2007 as part of a collaboration between Kleiner Perkins and Generation Investment Management . Mary Meeker joined the firm in 2010, and that year Kleiner Perkins expanded its practice to invest in growth stage companies. Meeker departed in 2019 to found Bond Capital. Mamoon Hamid from Social Capital and Ilya Fushman from Index Partners joined in 2017 and 2018 respectively, both as investing partners. The New York Times has described Kleiner Perkins as "perhaps Silicon Valley 's most famous venture firm". The firm

1972-401: The plant was closed in 1975. While the Fairchild corporation claims the Diné women were chosen to work in the Shiprock plant due to their "'nimble fingers'" as previously noted, the women of the Shiprock reservation were actually chosen as the workforce due to a lack of labor rights asserted by the women in addition to "cheap, plentiful workers and tax benefits". Fairchild had not done well in

2030-413: The semiconductor manufacturing industry, nor did it include Schlumberger Palo Alto Research. In the early 1980s, Fairchild was one of several silicon valley tech companies involved in a lawsuit brought on by residents of San Jose, California. The case pertained to industrial solvent contamination of ground water and soil in San Jose's Los Paseos neighborhood. A settlement was reached and the area designated

2088-478: The world, both operating since 1960. On March 19, 2001, Fairchild Semiconductor announced that it had completed the acquisition of Intersil Corporation 's discrete power business for approximately $ 338 million in cash. The acquisition moved Fairchild into position as the second-largest power MOSFET supplier in the world, representing a 20 percent share of this $ 3 billion market that grew 40 percent last year. On September 6, 2001, Fairchild Semiconductor announced

2146-434: The world’s first commercial MOS integrated circuit using SGT. Fairchild MOS Division was slow in understanding the potential of the SGT which promised not only faster, more reliable, and denser circuits, but also new device types that could enlarge the field of solid state electronics – for example, CCDs for image sensors, dynamic RAMs, and non-volatile memory devices such as EPROM and flash memories. Intel took advantage of

2204-835: Was spun off as an independent company again in 1997. In September 2016, Fairchild was acquired by ON Semiconductor . The company had locations in the United States at San Jose, California ; San Rafael, California ; South Portland, Maine ; West Jordan, Utah ; and Mountain Top, Pennsylvania . Outside the US, it operated locations in Australia ; Singapore ; Bucheon, South Korea ; Penang, Malaysia ; Suzhou, China ; and Cebu, Philippines , among others. In 1955, William Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory , funded by Beckman Instruments in Mountain View, California ; his plan

2262-470: Was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California . It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight " who defected from Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory . It became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of integrated circuits . Schlumberger bought the firm in 1979 and sold it to National Semiconductor in 1987; Fairchild

2320-417: Was an early Hewlett-Packard executive. Byers joined in 1977. It was the very first venture capital firm to open an office on Sand Hill Road and is credited with creating the cluster of venture capital firms in that area. Located in Menlo Park, California , Kleiner Perkins had access to the growing technology industries in the area. By the early 1970s, there were many semiconductor companies based in

2378-521: Was being operated at a loss, and the bottomline subsisted mostly from licensing of its patents. In 1979, Fairchild Camera and Instrument was purchased by Schlumberger Limited , an oil field services company, for $ 425 million. At this time, Fairchild's intellectual properties, on which Fairchild had been subsisting, were expiring. In 1980, under Schlumberger management, the Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research (FLAIR)

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2436-476: Was described by Dealbook in 2009 as "one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital providers", and The Wall Street Journal in 2010 called it one of the "largest and most established" venture capital firms. By 2019 it had raised around $ 9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds. In May 2012, Ellen Pao , an employee, sued the firm for gender discrimination in Pao v. Kleiner Perkins , which

2494-529: Was effective as a recruiter, he was less effective as a manager. A core group of Shockley employees, later known as the traitorous eight , became unhappy with his management of the company. The eight men were Julius Blank , Victor Grinich , Jean Hoerni , Eugene Kleiner , Jay Last , Gordon Moore , Robert Noyce , and Sheldon Roberts . Looking for funding on their own project, they turned to Sherman Fairchild 's Fairchild Camera and Instrument , an Eastern U.S. company with considerable military contracts. In 1957

2552-487: Was finalized in April 1999 for $ 450 million. To this day, Fairchild remains an important supplier for Samsung. In August 1999, Fairchild Semiconductor again became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol FCS. Fairchild's South Portland, Maine, and Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, locations are the longest continuously operating semiconductor manufacturing facilities in

2610-438: Was formed in 1972 as Kleiner Perkins. When Caufield and Byers became partners as well, the name was changed to Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in Menlo Park, California , with a focus on seed, early-stage, and growth companies. The firm is named after its four founding partners: Eugene Kleiner , Tom Perkins , Frank J. Caufield , and Brook Byers . Kleiner was a founder of Fairchild Semiconductor , and Perkins

2668-478: Was later acquired by National Semiconductor. In the fall of 1967, Fairchild suffered a loss for the first time since 1958 and announced write-offs of $ 4 million due to excess capacity, which contributed to a total loss of $ 7.6 million. Profits had sunk to $ 0.50 a share, compared to $ 3 a share the previous year, while the value of the stock dropped in half. In October 1967, the board ordered Carter to sell off all of Fairchild's unprofitable ventures. Carter responded to

2726-590: Was mostly the Standard Products group previously segregated by Gil Amelio . The Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation announced November 27, 1997, that it would acquire the semiconductor division of the Raytheon Corporation for about $ 120 million in cash. The acquisition was completed on December 31, 1997. In December 1998, Fairchild announced the acquisition of Samsung 's power division, which made power MOSFETs , IGBTs , etc. The deal

2784-1297: Was raising funds for a $ 500 million growth-stage clean-technology fund. In October 2010, the firm launched a $ 250 million fund called sFund to focus on social startups, with co-investors such as Facebook , Zynga and Amazon.com . In early 2016, the firm raised $ 1.4 billion in KP XVII and DGF III. The firm has been an early investor in more than 900 technology and life sciences firms since its founding, including Amazon.com , America Online , Applied Intuition , Beyond Meat , Citrix , Compaq , Electronic Arts , Genentech , Google , Glean , Intuit , Lotus Development , Netscape , Shazam , Shyp , Nest , Sun Microsystems , and Twitter . Some current investments include DJI , Handshake, Coursera , Shape Security, Farmers Business Network , Interos, IronNet Cybersecurity, Desktop Metal , Gusto , Plaid , Rippling , Robinhood , Slack , UiPath , Netlify , Loom , Viz.ai, and Looker . Very recent investments include Modern Health, Pillar, Future, TogetherAI and STORD. Kleiner Perkins paid $ 5 million in 1994 for around 25% of Netscape and profited from Netscape's IPO . Its investment of $ 8 million in Cerent

2842-637: Was recruited in mid-1996 in be the CEO . At this point, SVIP corporate functions moved to Boston , Massachusetts . Greenberg left the company in early 1997, and subsequently founded Scient . SVIP changed its name to Viant in the spring of 1998 after a company-wide vote. Its San Francisco Bay Area offices relocated in 1998 to the South of Market area in San Francisco. The company went public in June 1999. By

2900-526: Was reputed to run the tightest operation in the world. Sporck, Pierre Lamond and most managers had grown upset and disillusioned with corporate focus on unprofitable ventures at the expense of the semiconductor division. Executives at the semiconductor division were allotted substantially fewer stock options compared to other divisions. In March 1967, Sporck was hired away by Peter J. Sprague to National Semiconductor . Sporck brought with him four other Fairchild personnel. Actually, Lamond had previously assembled

2958-489: Was rewarded with the position of corporate vice-president and hence became the de facto head of the semiconductor division. However, internal trouble at Fairchild began to surface with a drop in earnings in 1967. There was increasing competition from newer start-ups. The semiconductor division, situated in Mountain View and Palo Alto, California, was actually managed by executives from Syosset, New York , who visited

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3016-861: Was sold in September 2002 to Divine , a company founded by Andrew Filipowski . Fast Five (consulting) Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield %26 Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ( KPCB ), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online , Amazon.com , Tandem Computers , Compaq , Electronic Arts , JD.com , Square , Genentech , Google , Netscape , Sun Microsystems , Nest , Palo Alto Networks , Synack , Snap , AppDynamics , and Twitter . By 2019 it had raised around $ 9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds. Kleiner Perkins

3074-445: Was soon making $ 130 million a year. Fairchild's Noyce and Texas Instrument's Kilby had independently invented the integrated circuit (IC) based on bipolar technology. In 1960, Noyce invented the planar integrated circuit. The industry preferred Fairchild's invention over Texas Instruments' because the transistors in planar ICs were interconnected by a thin film deposit, whereas Texas Instruments' invention required fine wires to connect

3132-728: Was started within Fairchild Research. In 1985 the lab was separated to form Schlumberger Palo Alto Research (SPAR). Fairchild research developed the Clipper architecture , a 32-bit RISC -like computer architecture, in the 1980s, resulting in the shipping of the C100 chip in 1986. The technology was later sold to Intergraph , its main customer. Schlumberger sold Fairchild to National Semiconductor in 1987 for $ 200 million. The sale did not include Fairchild's Test Division, which designed and produced automated test equipment (ATE) for

3190-477: Was successful initially, but quickly lost popularity when the Atari 2600 Video Computer System (or VCS) was released. By the end of the 1970s they had few new products in the pipeline, and increasingly turned to niche markets with their existing product line, notably "hardened" integrated circuits for military and space applications and isoplanar ECL products used in exotic applications like Cray Computers. Fairchild

3248-546: Was the 1958 2N697 , a mesa transistor developed by Moore, and it was a success. The first batch of 100 was sold to IBM for $ 150 apiece in order to build the computer for the B-70 bomber. More were sold to Autonetics to build the guidance system for the Minuteman ballistic missile. At the same time Jean Hoerni developed the planar process , which was a major improvement: planar transistors could be made more easily, at

3306-514: Was to develop a new type of "4-layer diode" that would work faster and have more uses than then-current transistors . At first he attempted to hire some of his former colleagues from Bell Labs , but none were willing to move to the West Coast or work with Shockley again at that time. Shockley then founded the core of the new company with what he considered the best and brightest graduates coming out of American engineering schools. While Shockley

3364-833: Was worth around $ 2 billion when the optical equipment maker was sold to Cisco Systems for $ 6.9 billion in August 1999. In 1999, Kleiner Perkins paid $ 12 million for a stake in Google . As of 2019, the market cap of Google's parent company was estimated at around $ 831 billion. As initial investors in Amazon.com Kleiner Perkins scored returns in excess of $ 1 billion on an $ 8 million investment. The firm currently has five partners managing investments: 37°25′18″N 122°12′41″W  /  37.421731°N 122.211275°W  / 37.421731; -122.211275 Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc.

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