July 18, 1968

Intel

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore incorporate NM Electronics, later renamed Intel

The company whose name became a byword for processors was legally born as "NM Electronics." The Intel name cost $15,000, bought from a hotel company.

Incorporated in Mountain View

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore incorporated a new semiconductor venture on 18 July 1968 under the temporary legal name NM Electronics, organized in Mountain View, California.

The plan was to pursue new semiconductor technologies, concentrating first on semiconductor memory as an alternative to magnetic-core memory. Moore's idea for such a company reportedly emerged while Noyce was mowing his lawn.

Noyce and Moore each put in $245,000; Arthur Rock added $10,000 and raised a further $2.5 million through convertible debentures, largely on the two men's reputations and before there were products or facilities.

The name came later, and so did the office

Intel was not on the incorporation papers. Noyce and Moore chose it shortly afterwards as a contraction of "integrated electronics" and bought the naming rights from Intelco, a hotel company, for $15,000.

Nor did work begin that day. The company opened on 1 August in a conference room in a leased Union Carbide building on Middlefield Road, with about twelve engineers.

Applying the Intel name to the 18 July entity is understandable shorthand, but it is not what the paperwork said.

Two founders, one financier

Intel's official history names Noyce and Moore as its founders, describing Rock as financier and chairman and Andrew Grove as an early leader who joined almost immediately.

Noyce and Moore were two of the eight engineers who left Shockley Semiconductor to establish Fairchild in 1957. Rock was their financier — not one of that group and not a Fairchild employee who left in 1968.

They had gone because they believed Fairchild's parent company was not reinvesting enough of the semiconductor division's profits in new research.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Some secondary accounts call Arthur Rock or Andrew Grove an Intel co-founder. Intel's current official history identifies Noyce and Moore as the founders, while describing Rock as financier and chairman and Grove as an early leader.
Intel's own historical material consistently gives July 18 as incorporation day and August 1 as the start of operations; articles that use “founded” can blur those two milestones.
Contemporary paperwork used NM Electronics. Applying the later Intel name to the July 18 entity is understandable shorthand but anachronistic if presented as the exact incorporated name.