Broadcom vs Volkswagen: Founders, CEOs and History

Broadcom

Founded

1991

Headquarters

Palo Alto, California

Current CEO

Hock Tan

Employees

33,000

Volkswagen

Founded

1937

Headquarters

Wolfsburg, Germany

Current CEO

Oliver Blume

Employees

663,000

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.

Volkswagen

• Ferdinand Porsche

  Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was an Austrian-born automotive engineer who had worked for Lohner, Austro-Daimler and Daimler-Benz before opening his own design office in Stuttgart in 1931.

Broadcom

1. 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.

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2. 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.

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3. 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.

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4. 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).

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5. 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.

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6. 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.

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Volkswagen

1. Hermann Münch1946–1947

   Chief Executive Officer

   Early executive involved in the incredibly complex immediate post-war administration of the completely destroyed factory under British military control.

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2. Heinrich Nordhoff1948–1968

   Chief Executive Officer

   The absolute legendary post-war architect who took the ruins of the VW factory and transformed the Beetle into a massive, globally beloved cultural icon and economic miracle.

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3. Kurt Lotz1968–1971

   Chief Executive Officer

   Early post-war leader who began the critical process of diversifying VW's lineup beyond relying entirely on a single model (the Beetle).

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4. Rudolf Leiding1971–1975

   Chief Executive Officer

   Crucial CEO who managed the extremely difficult, highly risky transition away from the iconic but severely outdated Beetle toward modern, front-wheel-drive water-cooled cars (like the Golf).

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5. Toni Schmücker1975–1982

   Chief Executive Officer

   Guided the company through the severe financial crises of the 1970s, ensuring the successful launch and massive adoption of the original VW Golf.

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6. Carl Hahn1982–1993

   Chief Executive Officer

   As CEO in the 1980s, he executed the massive, highly strategic acquisitions of SEAT and Skoda, laying the foundation for VW's absolute dominance in Europe.

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7. Ferdinand Piëch1993–2002

   Chief Executive Officer

   As the legendary, absolutely ruthless patriarch (and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche), he transformed VW from a struggling mass-market brand into the most powerful automotive conglomerate on Earth.

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8. Bernd Pischetsrieder2002–2006

   Chief Executive Officer

   Serving as CEO from 2002 to 2006, he oversaw the incredibly complex integration of massive luxury brands like Bugatti and Bentley into the VW Group portfolio.

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9. Martin Winterkorn2007–2015

   Chief Executive Officer

   As the notoriously demanding, absolutely feared CEO, he oversaw massive global expansion but fostered a culture of absolute terror that led engineers to cheat rather than admit failure.

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10. Matthias Müller2015–2018

    Chief Executive Officer

    As CEO during the darkest period in modern VW history, he initiated the massive cultural purge of the toxic, highly secretive engineering culture that caused the cheating scandal.

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11. Herbert Diess2018–2022

    Chief Executive Officer

    Serving as CEO, he forcefully dragged the massive, highly bureaucratic legacy automaker into the Tesla era, though his abrasive style alienated the powerful Porsche-Piëch families.

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12. Oliver Blume2022–present

    Chairman of the Board of Management

    He also ran Porsche AG alongside the group role until Michael Leiters took over as Porsche CEO on January 1, 2026, leaving Blume focused on Volkswagen Group.

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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

Volkswagen

• Porsche AG2012Undisclosed
• Bentley Motors1998Undisclosed
• Auto Union / Audi1965Undisclosed