Wikipedia
Broadcom Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company in the wireless and broadband communication business. It was acquired by Avago Technologies in 2016 and currently operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merged entity called Broadcom Limited. The division is headquartered in Irvine, California. Broadcom Corporation was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1991. In 1995, the company moved from its Westwood, Los Angeles, office to Irvine, California. In 1998, Broadcom became a public company on the NASDAQ exchange (ticker symbol: BRCM) and now employs approximately 11,750 people worldwide in more than 15 countries.
Broadcom is among Gartner's Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by revenue. Broadcom first landed on the Fortune 500 in 2009. In 2012, Broadcom's total revenue was $8.01 billion. In 2013, Broadcom was No. 327 on the Fortune 500, climbing 17 places from its 2012 ranking of No. 344.
In May 28, 2015 chip maker Avago Technologies Ltd. agreed to buy Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion in cash and stock. At closing, which completed on February 1, 2016, Broadcom shareholders will hold 32% of the new Singapore-based company to be called Broadcom Limited. Hock Tan, Avago President and CEO, will be the new CEO of the new combined company. Dr. Samueli will be Chief Technology Officer and member of the combined company's board. and Dr. Nicholas will serve in a strategic advisory role within the new company. The new merged entity is named Broadcom Limited but inherits the ticker symbol AVGO. The BRCM ticker symbol was retired.
In May 2016, Cypress Semiconductor announced that it will acquire Broadcom Corporation's full portfolio of IoT products for $550 million. Under the deal, Cypress acquires Broadcom's IoT products and intellectual property for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee connectivity, as well as Broadcom's WICED platform and SDK for developers. The deal combines Broadcom's developer tools and connectivity technologies for IoT devices with Cypress' own programmable system-on-a-chip (SoC) products that provide memory, computing, and graphics processing for low-power devices.