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NEC Corporation

Founders

Who Founded NEC?

Kunihiko Iwadare · Founded 1899 · HQ today: Minato, Tokyo, Japan

Who founded NEC?

NEC was founded by Kunihiko Iwadare in 1899. It is now led by Takayuki Morita.

Founders
Kunihiko Iwadare
Founded
1899
Headquarters
Minato, Tokyo, Japan
Number of founders
1
Current CEO
Takayuki Morita (since 2021)
Where was NEC founded?
NEC was founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1899.
When was NEC founded?
NEC was founded in 1899.
Who started NEC?
NEC was founded by Kunihiko Iwadare.
How old is NEC?
NEC is 127 years old as of 2026.

Founding Story

NEC was founded on July 17, 1899, as Nippon Electric Company by Kunihiko Iwadare, an engineer who had worked for Thomas Edison in the United States, together with Western Electric, which held a majority stake. It was Japan's first joint venture with foreign capital and began by importing and then manufacturing telephones and switching equipment for Japan's growing phone network. Sumitomo became a partner in the 1920s, tying NEC to the Sumitomo group.

Background

Japanese electrical engineer.

Role at NEC Corporation

Kunihiko Iwadare founded NEC (Nippon Electric Company) in 1899. After working for Thomas Edison in New York, he returned to Japan and formed a highly strategic joint venture with Western Electric, creating Japan's very first joint venture with foreign capital. He successfully built NEC into the absolute primary supplier of telecommunications equipment for the Japanese government.

Kunihiko Iwadare was born in 1857.

Iwadare was born on August 15, 1857 and died on December 20, 1941. A graduate of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo, he worked as a telegraph engineer for the Japanese government.

NEC Corporation: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Takayuki Morita

President and Chief Executive Officer

2021 – Present

His tenure has focused on repositioning NEC away from its historical dependence on domestic telecom-equipment and PC hardware sales toward recurring software, cybersecurity, and biometric-identification revenue, an area where NEC has long-standing technology but historically weaker global brand recognition than Western competitors. He has also expanded NEC's biometric and facial-recognition technology sales to law-enforcement and border-security customers internationally, an area where NEC has ranked among global leaders in independent accuracy benchmarks for years, even though the broader NEC brand remains far less recognized outside Japan than its underlying technology performance would suggest. He has framed NEC's overseas software acquisitions and biometric-technology exports as central to reversing decades of the company's declining relevance outside Japan, a turnaround effort that depends on convincing Western enterprise and government customers to trust a Japanese vendor over entrenched US and European incumbents in security-sensitive categories like digital identity and financial software.

Nobuhiro Endo

President

2010 – 2016

He refocused NEC on infrastructure for business and government. Takashi Niino succeeded him in 2016.

Koji Kobayashi

Former CEO and Chairman

1964 – 1988

Kobayashi's C&C concept became closely associated with his name across the global electronics industry and guided NEC's investment into semiconductors and mainframe computing, helping make NEC one of the world's largest chipmakers and computer manufacturers during the 1980s.

Keep researching NEC

Who Founded NEC? FAQ

Who founded Nippon Electric Company (NEC) and when was it established?

NEC was founded on July 17, 1899, by Japanese electrical engineer Kunihiko Iwadare in collaboration with Takeshiro Maeda and Walter T. Carleton of the American firm Western Electric Company.

Who was Kunihiko Iwadare and what was his historical connection to Thomas Edison?

Kunihiko Iwadare (1857 to 1941) graduated from the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo and moved to the United States in the 1880s, where he worked directly as an electrical engineer under Thomas Edison at Edison Machine Works in New York before returning to Japan.

What made NEC unique as Japan's first international joint venture?

Following the revision of unequal foreign treaties in 1899, NEC was established as the very first Japanese corporation with direct foreign equity capital, with Western Electric holding a 54% founding stake to manufacture telephone sets and switchboards.

What was Walter T. Carleton's role in the founding of NEC?

Walter T. Carleton represented Western Electric's interests in Japan, providing essential telephone manufacturing patents, precision factory machinery, and American industrial management practices that enabled NEC to rapidly modernize Japanese telecommunications.

How did NEC support the modernization of Japan's telecommunications network?

In the early 1900s, NEC supplied the Japanese Ministry of Communications with automatic telephone exchange switchboards, submarine cables, and telephone handsets under the government's multi-stage National Telephone Expansion Plans.

How did the Sumitomo Group become associated with NEC?

In 1920, the historic Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo entered into a capital and management partnership with NEC, leading to NEC becoming affiliated with the Sumitomo keiretsu while retaining its technological focus on electronics and telecommunications.

What was NEC's foundational philosophy regarding quality manufacturing?

Iwadare instituted Western Electric's rigorous quality control standards under the slogan 'Better Products, Better Service', establishing a legacy of precision engineering that earned NEC the prestigious Deming Application Prize for quality control in 1973.

How is Kunihiko Iwadare remembered in Japanese industrial history?

Kunihiko Iwadare is revered as the father of Japan's modern telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry, bridging Edison's American engineering innovations with Japanese industrial development.

What was Kunihiko Iwadare's relationship with Thomas Edison?

In 1887, young Japanese engineer Kunihiko Iwadare traveled to New York and worked directly under Thomas Edison at Edison Machine Works. Inspired by Edison's commercial discipline, Iwadare returned to Japan and founded NEC in 1899 to build the country's modern electrical communications infrastructure.

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Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.