Maxim Integrated is an American, publicly traded company that designs, manufactures, and sells analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Maxim Integrated develops integrated circuits for the automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has design centers, manufacturing facilities, and sales offices throughout the world. In the fiscal year 2019, it had US$2.31 billion in sales, 7,131 employees, and 35,000 customers worldwide. Maxim is a Fortune 1000 company and its stock is a component of the NASDAQ-100stock market index. In December 2018, Maxim was added back to the S&P 500.
History
Maxim was founded in April 1983. Its nine initial team members had a variety of experience in semiconductors design and sales. The founding team included Jack Gifford, an industry pioneer since the 1960s; Fred Beck, an IC sales and distribution pioneer; Dave Bingham, General Electric’s Scientist of the Year in 1982; Steve Combs, a pioneer in wafer technologies and manufacturing; Lee Evans, also a pioneer in CMOS analog microchip design and General Electric’s Scientist of the Year in 1982; Dave Fullagar, inventor of the first internally compensated operational amplifier circuit; Roger Fuller, yet another pioneer in CMOS microchip design; Rich Hood, development director for some of the first microprocessor-controlled semiconductor test systems; and Dick Wilenken, who is acknowledged as the father of key analog switch and multiplexer technologies. Based on a two-page business plan, they obtained US$9 million in venture capital to establish the company. In the first year, the company developed 24 second-source products. After that, Maxim designed proprietary products that offered greater differentiation and higher profits. In 1985, the industry was introduced to the MAX600, the first proprietary product to win an industry award and start decades of technical innovation. Maxim recorded its first profitable fiscal year in 1987, with the help of a product called MAX232, and posted a profit every year since it went public in 1988. Annual revenue reached $500 million in fiscal year 1998 and in fiscal 2011 totaled over $2.47 billion. In 2005, Maxim became a Fortune 1000 company. Three years later, the company established its Chief Technical Office, and the number of patents rose by 50% over the next two years. In 2010, the company shipped its first analog product on a 300mm wafer. In July 2020, Maxim Integrated agreed to be acquired by Analog Devices in an all-stock deal for US$20.91 billion. Maxim's product portfolio now includes power and battery management ICs, sensors, analog ICs, interface ICs, communications solutions, digital ICs, embedded security, and microcontrollers.
Acquisitions
1990: Purchased first wafer fabrication facility in Sunnyvale, California.
1994: Acquired Tektronix Semiconductor Division in Beaverton, Oregon, giving Maxim high-speed bipolar processes for wireless RF and fiber-optic products.
1997: Purchased an additional wafer fab from IC Works in San Jose, California, to increase fab capacity.
2001: Acquired Dallas Semiconductor in Dallas, Texas, to gain expertise in digital and mixed-signal CMOS design, as well as an additional wafer fab.
2003: Purchased submicrometre CMOS fab from Philips in San Antonio, Texas, to ramp up capacity and support processes down to the 0.25-micrometre level.
2007: Purchased 0.18-micrometre fab from Atmel in Irving, Texas, approximately doubling fab capacity.
2008: Acquired Mobilygen in Santa Clara, California, to add H.264 video-compression technology to its portfolio.
2009: Acquired Innova Card, headquartered in La Ciotat, France, for the financial transaction terminal semiconductor market.
2009: Acquired two product lines from Zilog, Inc. Maxim purchased the Secure Transactions product line, featuring the Zatara family and the hardware portion of Zilog's Wireless Control product line, commonly found in universal remote controls.
2010: Maxim acquired the technology and employees of Trinity Convergence Limited, a software company based in Cambridge, U.K. Trinity was part of the ecosystem to bring Skypevideo conferencing to the LCD TV market.
2010: Maxim acquired Phyworks, a supplier of optical transceiver chips for the broadband communications market.
From October 2007 to October 2008, Maxim's common stock was delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange due to the company's inability to file financial statements related to stock option backdating. Maxim's stock was traded over-the-counter and quoted on the Pink Sheets until the company completed its restatement in 2008. Maxim's CFO Carl Jasper resigned due to an investigation into the issue by Maxim's board of directors. Maxim restated its earnings in September 2008 and was relisted on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on October 8, 2008.
