What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO
11 days ago
- #dotcom-era
- #tech-IPOs
- #CPU-technology
- Transmeta was the last big IPO of the dotcom era, raising $273 million in November 2000.
- Some analysts consider Transmeta the last successful tech IPO before Google in 2004, though PayPal's 2002 IPO is a notable exception.
- Transmeta was a hardware company producing x86-compatible CPUs with a unique translation layer approach.
- Their CPUs, Crusoe and Efficieon, struggled to compete with Intel and AMD in performance and efficiency.
- Transmeta shifted to licensing intellectual property in 2005 and was sold to Novafora in 2009, which later ceased operations.
- Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, worked at Transmeta, allowing him to continue kernel development while employed.
- Transmeta CPUs were used in low-power laptops, thin clients, and embedded applications but were not widely adopted.
- The company's legacy is more akin to failed dotcoms like Netscape rather than successful survivors like Red Hat.