Texas Instruments Inc.
Semiconductors & Electronic ComponentsFounded 1951- Updated July 2025
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: July 2025
CorpDigest
Texas Instruments Inc.
Company History
Founded 1951 in Dallas, Texas
Last reviewed: 2025-07-15 · By Swet Parvadiya
Texas Instruments Inc. is a Semiconductors & Electronic Components company with $15.6B in 2024 revenue and 34K employees worldwide. Texas Instruments Incorporated stands as one of the most consequential technology companies in American history—responsible for the invention of the integrated circuit—yet it operates today with a deliberate institutional modesty that is almost unique among companies of its scale and historical significance. The company's modern identity is anchored in analog and embedded processing semiconductors, products that are pervasive in the physical world even if they are invisible to consumers. Every piece of industrial equipment that hums, every electric vehicle that accelerates smoothly, every smart thermostat that adjusts to your presence, and every medical monitor that tracks a patient's vital signs contains chips from Texas Instruments or uses reference designs inspired by TI's application engineering work. The company's decision to exit consumer-facing markets—including the mobile phone chip business it sold in 2013—and redirect all of its capital and engineering resources toward industrial and automotive markets was a strategic pivot executed over several years under CEO Rich Templeton, who served from 2004 to 2022. That pivot has proven to be one of the more prescient strategic decisions in the semiconductor industry, as industrial and automotive end markets exhibit longer product life cycles, more stable customer relationships, less pricing volatility, and higher barriers to competitive entry than the consumer electronics markets TI vacated. The company's Dallas, Texas headquarters sits at the center of a semiconductor ecosystem that TI itself helped build, and its culture reflects the blend of engineering rigor and financial discipline that has made it one of the most consistently profitable manufacturers in the United States.
Patrick E. Haggerty served as president and later chairman of Texas Instruments from 1951 to 1976 and is widely credited as the primary architect of TI's transformation from a seismic exploration instrumentation company into a global semiconductor powerhouse. His decision in 1952 to license transistor technology from Western Electric, his recruitment of Gordon Teal from Bell Labs to develop silicon transistors, and his strategic push to commercialize the transistor in consumer products—most notably through the 1954 transistor radio initiative—established TI's early competitive position in an industry that did not yet fully exist. Haggerty's vision of what he called the 'creative matrix'—an organizational structure that simultaneously pursued near-term commercial objectives and long-horizon research—predated modern concepts of ambidextrous organization management by decades. He was a founding trustee of what would become the University of Texas at Dallas and played a pivotal role in establishing the research infrastructure of the Dallas technology corridor. He died in 1980, having built the company from a small seismograph instrument maker into one of the most important technology companies in the world.
Cecil H. Green served as a director of Texas Instruments from its founding until his retirement from active corporate involvement in the 1970s and made essential contributions to the company's financial management and international expansion. His longest-lasting legacy, however, is philanthropic: the Green family donated more than 200 million dollars to educational and scientific institutions over their lifetimes, establishing the University of Texas at Dallas as a research university—a transformation that ultimately seeded the Dallas technology ecosystem from which TI continues to draw engineering talent. Green was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 for his services to education and died in 2003 at the age of 102.
Texas Instruments Incorporated was formally established as an independent entity in 1951 by Cecil H. Green, J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott, and Patrick E. Haggerty, growing out of the electronics manufacturing operations of Geophysics Service Incorporated. The new company was incorporated in Delaware and began operations focused on defense electronics and early transistor development.
TI acquired a license from Western Electric—AT&T's manufacturing subsidiary—to produce transistors based on Bell Laboratories' technology for a fee of 25,000 dollars. The license gave TI the intellectual property foundation it needed to enter the semiconductor manufacturing business and was one of the most consequential technology licensing transactions in the history of the electronics industry.
TI engineer Gordon Teal announced the world's first commercial silicon transistor at the Institute of Radio Engineers convention, shocking competitors who had not believed silicon transistors were manufacturable at commercial volumes. The silicon transistor's ability to operate at much higher temperatures than germanium transistors made it far more suitable for military and industrial applications, giving TI an immediate competitive advantage.
On September 12, 1958, TI engineer Jack Kilby demonstrated the world's first working integrated circuit, a small piece of germanium containing a transistor, capacitor, and resistors connected by metal wire on a single substrate. The demonstration solved the 'tyranny of numbers' problem that had limited electronic system complexity and laid the conceptual foundation for the microprocessor, the personal computer, the smartphone, and every major digital technology that followed.
TI introduced the Datamath, the world's first commercial handheld electronic calculator powered by a single integrated circuit chip that TI designed and manufactured. The Datamath sold for 149.95 dollars at introduction and demonstrated TI's ability to commercialize its semiconductor technology in consumer products, though aggressive price competition in the calculator market would eventually erode margins industry-wide.
TI introduced the TMS9900, the world's first commercially available single-chip 16-bit microprocessor. The TMS9900 was used as the CPU of the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A home computers and demonstrated TI's leading position in microprocessor design, though the company's home computer venture ultimately proved commercially unsuccessful.
Texas Instruments announced the discontinuation of the TI-99/4A home computer following losses estimated at approximately 660 million dollars from its consumer PC business. The withdrawal marked a significant strategic inflection point for TI, reinforcing institutional caution about consumer-facing hardware markets and redirecting organizational focus toward semiconductor components for industrial and commercial customers.
TI commercially launched Digital Light Processing technology based on the Digital Micromirror Device chip invented by engineer Larry Hornbeck in 1987. DLP technology went on to power hundreds of millions of projectors, digital cinema screens, and televisions globally, and Hornbeck's invention is today recognized as one of the landmark achievements in MEMS semiconductor history.
TI completed the acquisition of National Semiconductor Corporation for approximately 6.5 billion dollars in cash, adding National's extensive analog product portfolio—particularly in power management and audio amplifiers—to TI's catalog. The acquisition made TI the undisputed leader in analog semiconductors by revenue and added manufacturing facilities and customer relationships that significantly expanded TI's market reach.
Texas Instruments formally exited the mobile application processor market, discontinuing development of its OMAP processor line that had powered smartphones and tablets from Nokia, Motorola, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. The exit freed approximately 1 billion dollars per year in research and development spending and redirected TI's engineering resources toward the industrial and automotive analog markets that management viewed as more defensible and more aligned with TI's manufacturing strengths.
TI announced plans to construct new 300-millimeter semiconductor fabrication facilities in Sherman, Texas, and to expand its Lehi, Utah facility acquired from Micron Technology. The planned investment of approximately 30 billion dollars over the following decade represented one of the largest single-company semiconductor manufacturing investments in US history and was subsequently supported by CHIPS and Science Act investment tax credits.
Haviv Ilan assumed the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of Texas Instruments, succeeding Rich Templeton who had served as CEO since 2004. Ilan, who had served in senior executive roles at TI since 2009 including as President and Chief Operating Officer, continued the company's strategic focus on analog and embedded processing markets and its manufacturing investment program during the semiconductor industry down-cycle.
TI acquired Burr-Brown, an Arizona-based analog and mixed-signal semiconductor company, for approximately 7.6 billion dollars in an all-stock transaction in 2000. Burr-Brown was among the most respected precision analog semiconductor designers in the world, with particular strength in high-resolution data converters, audio digital-to-analog converters, operational amplifiers, and instrumentation amplifiers used in test and measurement, medical, and industrial applications. The acquisition was intended to strengthen TI's analog portfolio at a time when the company was establishing its leadership in analog semiconductors as a strategic priority.
TI acquired National Semiconductor, the Santa Clara-based analog semiconductor pioneer, for approximately 6.5 billion dollars in cash in 2011, in what was at the time the largest semiconductor acquisition TI had ever executed. National Semiconductor had been one of the founding companies of the Silicon Valley semiconductor industry, and its product portfolio—particularly in power management, audio amplifiers, display drivers, and interface circuits—was complementary to but minimally overlapping with TI's existing analog catalog. The acquisition was explicitly motivated by TI's strategy to achieve leadership in the analog semiconductor market by product count, manufacturing scale, and customer reach.
Texas Instruments acquired Micron Technology's 300-millimeter semiconductor fabrication facility in Lehi, Utah, for approximately 900 million dollars in 2021. The Lehi facility, which Micron had been operating for NAND flash memory production, was purchased by TI as a ready-made 300-millimeter manufacturing shell that could be converted to analog semiconductor production at significantly lower cost and faster timeline than constructing a new greenfield facility. The acquisition was a key element of TI's strategy to rapidly expand its 300-millimeter analog manufacturing capacity in the United States.
TI acquired Unitrode Corporation, a Massachusetts-based power management semiconductor company, for approximately 2.5 billion dollars in 2000. Unitrode was a highly regarded specialist in power supply control integrated circuits, battery charger ICs, and power management components used in servers, telecom equipment, and portable electronics—product categories where TI had limited presence at the time of the acquisition. The deal was part of TI's late-1990s and early-2000s strategy of acquiring analog specialists to rapidly build the power management portfolio depth needed to compete effectively in the fast-growing semiconductor power management market.