When you think of Intel today, you probably think of the microprocessor company. Maybe you also think about about 'Intel Inside' and their famous jingle. You might even think "big, stable, boring public company". But for the first two decades of Intel's life, absolutely none of those things were true. Today we tell the incredible story of how the company that started it all in Silicon Valley clawed back from a crisis that brought them to the brink of death, and of one man who rose as the ultimate survivor to become their leader and a legend even in his own time: the late, great Andy Grove.

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

More Acquired!

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC

Note: This episode originally aired as part of Podapalooza, a podcast festival organized by our friends at Glow to benefit COVID relief. Find out more and support the cause at https://www.plza.org

Sources:

• Only the Paranoid Survive:   https://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge-ebook/dp/B0036S4B2G
• Swimming Across:  https://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Across-Andrew-S-Grove-ebook/dp/B07CJRM4DX/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Moore
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce
•  https://www.businessinsider.com/alan-patricof-greycroft-ipo-market-2011-1
•  https://anthonysmoak.com/2016/03/27/andy-grove-and-intels-move-from-memory-to-microprocessors/
•  http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Intel_386_Business_Strategy/102701962.05.01.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley
•  https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/remembering-andy-grove-intel.html