Broadcom vs Cloudflare: Founders, CEOs and History
Broadcom was founded in 1991 by Henry Samueli, Henry Nicholas III and is led by Hock Tan. Cloudflare was founded in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn, Lee Holloway and is led by Matthew Prince.
Company facts
Broadcom
- Founded
- 1991
- Headquarters
- Palo Alto, California
- Current CEO
- Hock Tan
- Employees
- 33,000
Cloudflare
- Founded
- 2009
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Current CEO
- Matthew Prince
- Employees
- 5,156
Founders
Broadcom
Henry Samueli
Henry Samueli co-founded Broadcom Corporation in Los Angeles in 1991 with Henry Nicholas III, his former doctoral student, and served as its chief technical officer while the company built chips for cable modems, set-top boxes, Ethernet and Wi-Fi.
Henry Nicholas III
Henry Nicholas III co-founded Broadcom Corporation with Samueli in 1991 and was its president and CEO through the cable modem boom, the April 1998 IPO and a string of stock-funded acquisitions in 1999 and 2000. He resigned in January 2003.
Cloudflare
Matthew Prince
Matthew Prince is Cloudflare's co-founder, CEO, and board chair. In 2004 he and Lee Holloway built Project Honey Pot, which let website owners track spammers harvesting email addresses but could not stop them.
Michelle Zatlyn
Michelle Zatlyn is Cloudflare's co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer, and a member of its board. She met Matthew Prince at Harvard Business School, where the two developed the business plan that became Cloudflare in 2009.
Lee Holloway
Lee Holloway co-founded Cloudflare in 2009 and was its first lead engineer and systems architect. He had earlier built Project Honey Pot with Matthew Prince starting in 2004, and he designed much of Cloudflare's early software infrastructure.
CEOs and their tenures
Broadcom
- Henry Samueli1991–present
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board
Henry Samueli co-founded Broadcom Corporation in 1991 and, as chief technical officer, led the engineering behind its cable modem, Ethernet and Wi-Fi chips. He joined the board after Avago bought Broadcom Corporation in 2016 and is chairman of Broadcom Inc.
Source - Henry Nicholas III1991–2003
Co-Founder; President and CEO of Broadcom Corporation
Henry Nicholas III ran Broadcom Corporation from its founding through its April 1998 IPO and the dot-com boom, then resigned in January 2003. Backdating and drug charges brought against him in 2008 were dismissed in December 2009 and January 2010.
Source - Scott McGregor2005–2016
President and CEO of Broadcom Corporation
Scott McGregor led Broadcom Corporation from 2005 until Avago completed its $37 billion acquisition in February 2016, a period when the company expanded in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, set-top box and data center switch chips.
Source - Hock Tan2006–present
President and Chief Executive Officer
Hock E. Tan became CEO of Avago Technologies in March 2006 and has run the company through its acquisitions of LSI (2014), Broadcom Corporation (2016), Brocade (2017), CA Technologies (2018), Symantec's enterprise business (2019) and VMware (2023).
Source - Kirsten Spears2020–2026
Chief Financial Officer
Kirsten Spears was CFO for about six years of her 12 years at Broadcom, covering the VMware financing and the AI-driven growth of 2024 and 2025. She retired on 12 June 2026 and agreed to advise the company for nine months.
Source - Amie Thuener2026–present
Chief Financial Officer
Amie Thuener joined Broadcom as CFO on 12 June 2026 from Alphabet, where she had been vice president, corporate controller and chief accounting officer since 2018, after an earlier career at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Source
Cloudflare
- Matthew Prince2009–present
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chair
Co-founded Cloudflare in 2009, led it through its September 2019 NYSE IPO, and has grown annual revenue past $2 billion (2025) while expanding from web security into Zero Trust, developer, and AI services.
Source - Michelle Zatlyn2009–present
Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer
Co-founded Cloudflare in 2009 with Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway and, as President and COO, has led operations and company-building as Cloudflare scaled to more than 5,000 employees.
Source - Thomas Seifert2017–present
Chief Financial Officer
As CFO, he consistently delivered high revenue growth while carefully controlling capital expenditures, allowing Cloudflare to heavily invest in its serverless Edge computing network.
Source
Timeline: Broadcom and Cloudflare side by side
1991Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation founded
UCLA professor Henry Samueli and his former doctoral student Henry Nicholas III found Broadcom Corporation in Los Angeles to build broadband communications chips in CMOS, starting with chips for cable modems and digital set-top boxes.
1998Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation IPO
Broadcom Corporation lists on Nasdaq in April 1998 at $24 a share, as cable operators roll out DOCSIS cable modems built on its chips.
2005Broadcom
Avago Technologies formed
KKR and Silver Lake buy Agilent Technologies' semiconductor products group, whose roots go back to Hewlett-Packard's chip operations, for about $2.66 billion and name it Avago Technologies.
2006Broadcom
Hock Tan becomes CEO of Avago
Hock Tan becomes president and CEO of Avago in March 2006 and begins pruning its portfolio to the businesses with defensible technology.
2009Broadcom
Avago lists on Nasdaq
Avago Technologies goes public on Nasdaq in August 2009 at $15 a share, giving it stock to use in later acquisitions.
2009Cloudflare
Cloudflare Founded
Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn, and Lee Holloway founded Cloudflare, building on the Project Honey Pot spam-tracking project.
2010Cloudflare
TechCrunch Disrupt Launch
Cloudflare launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in September 2010, offering free website protection and acceleration.
2014Broadcom
LSI Corporation acquired
Avago completes its $6.6 billion purchase of LSI in May 2014, adding storage controllers and custom ASIC design teams.
2014Cloudflare
Universal SSL and Project Galileo
Cloudflare gave free SSL certificates to all customers with Universal SSL and launched Project Galileo to protect at-risk nonprofits and journalists for free.
2016Broadcom
Avago buys Broadcom Corporation
Avago completes its $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom Corporation in February 2016, takes the Broadcom name and trades as AVGO.
2017Broadcom
Brocade acquired
Broadcom completes its $5.9 billion purchase of Brocade Communications in November 2017, adding Fibre Channel storage networking switches.
2017Cloudflare
Cloudflare Workers Announced
Cloudflare introduced Workers, a serverless platform built on V8 isolates that lets developers run code across its network.
2018Broadcom
Qualcomm bid blocked and move to the U.S.
President Trump blocks Broadcom's unsolicited bid for Qualcomm on national security grounds in March 2018. Broadcom completes its redomicile from Singapore to the United States that April.
2018Broadcom
CA Technologies acquired
Broadcom completes its $18.9 billion purchase of CA Technologies in November 2018, its first large software deal, creating the infrastructure software segment.
2019Broadcom
Symantec enterprise security acquired
Broadcom buys Symantec's enterprise security business for $10.7 billion in November 2019, adding endpoint, web and data loss prevention software.
2019Cloudflare
NYSE IPO
Cloudflare completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NET in September 2019 at $15 per share, raising about $525 million.
2020Cloudflare
Cloudflare One Launched
Cloudflare bundled its Zero Trust access, secure web gateway, and network services into Cloudflare One, its SASE platform.
2022Broadcom
VMware deal announced
Broadcom agrees in May 2022 to buy VMware in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $61 billion at announcement.
2022Cloudflare
Area 1 Security and R2 General Availability
Cloudflare acquired email security company Area 1 Security for about $162 million and made R2 zero-egress object storage generally available.
2023Broadcom
VMware acquisition closes
Broadcom completes the VMware acquisition on 22 November 2023 after clearances in the U.S., EU, UK and China, a deal valued at about $69 billion including assumed debt.
2024Broadcom
Stock split and $1 trillion market value
Broadcom splits its stock 10-for-1 in July 2024, sells VMware's end-user computing unit to KKR for about $4 billion, reports fiscal 2024 revenue of $51.6 billion and passes $1 trillion in market value in December 2024.
2024Cloudflare
Revenue Reaches $1.67 Billion
Cloudflare reported 2024 revenue of $1.67 billion and free cash flow of $166.9 million.
2025Broadcom
OpenAI partnership and record fiscal 2025
OpenAI and Broadcom agree in October 2025 to deploy 10 gigawatts of OpenAI-designed accelerators. Fiscal 2025 revenue rises 24% to $63.9 billion, with about $20 billion from AI chips.
2025Cloudflare
Revenue Passes $2 Billion
Cloudflare reported 2025 revenue of $2.17 billion (+29.8%) and closed its largest contract ever, averaging $42.5 million per year in ACV.
2026Broadcom
AI chips pass half of revenue
Amie Thuener becomes CFO in June 2026. Third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue rises 86% to $29.6 billion, and AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion is 56% of the total.
2026Cloudflare
VoidZero Acquisition and Growth Acceleration
Cloudflare acquired VoidZero, the company behind the Vite JavaScript tooling ecosystem, in June 2026 and reported Q2 2026 revenue growth of 36%.
Acquisitions
Broadcom
- VMware2023$69B
- Symantec Enterprise Security business2019$10.7B
- CA Technologies2018$18.9B
- Brocade Communications Systems2017$5.9B
- Broadcom Corporation2016$37B
- LSI Corporation2014$6.6B
Cloudflare
- Human Native2026Undisclosed
- Astro Technology Company2026Undisclosed
- VoidZero2026Undisclosed
- Replicate2025Undisclosed
- Nefeli Networks2024Undisclosed
- Baselime2024Undisclosed
Questions about Broadcom vs Cloudflare
Who is the CEO of Broadcom Inc. and Cloudflare, Inc.?
Broadcom Inc. is led by Hock Tan and Cloudflare, Inc. is led by Matthew Prince. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Broadcom Inc. founded vs Cloudflare, Inc.?
Broadcom Inc. was founded in 1991 — 18 years before Cloudflare, Inc., which was founded in 2009. Broadcom Inc.'s longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Cloudflare, Inc..
How many employees does Broadcom Inc. have compared to Cloudflare, Inc.?
Broadcom Inc. employs approximately 33,000 people, while Cloudflare, Inc. employs approximately 5,156. Broadcom Inc. has the larger workforce at 33,000 employees, compared to Cloudflare, Inc.'s 5,156. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Broadcom Inc. and Cloudflare, Inc. headquartered?
Both Broadcom Inc. and Cloudflare, Inc. are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Broadcom Inc. and Cloudflare, Inc.?
Broadcom Inc. was founded by Henry Samueli, Henry Nicholas III. Cloudflare, Inc. was founded by Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn, Lee Holloway.
Which company has a longer operating history — Broadcom Inc. or Cloudflare, Inc.?
Broadcom Inc. has been operating for approximately 35 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Cloudflare, Inc. has been in operation for around 17 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Broadcom vs Cloudflare overview