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The traitorous eight were a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in 1957, to found Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1956 William Bradford Shockley recruited a group of young Ph.D. graduates with the goal of developing and producing new state-of-the-art semiconductor devices. In 1956 Shockley won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and as an experienced researcher and teacher, his management of the group was both authoritarian and unpopular. This was accentuated by Shockley's research focus proving not to be fruitful. After the demand for Shockley to be replaced was rebuffed, the eight left and formed their own company.
Shockley described their leaving as a "betrayal." The eight who left Shockley Semiconductor were Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and C Sheldon Roberts. In August 1957, they reached an agreement with Sherman Fairchild, and on September 18, 1957, they formed Fairchild Semiconductor. The newly founded Fairchild grew into the leader in the semiconductor industry. In 1960, it became an incubator of Silicon Valley and was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of dozens of corporations, including Intel and AMD. These many spin-off companies came to be known as "Fairchildren."
Founded by Fairchild's Founding Engineers AKA The Traitor's Eight
- Amelco
- Intel
- Intersil
- Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
- Signetics
Founded By Other Fairchild Engineers/Executives
- AMD
- Atmel
- Cadence
- Chips & Technologies
- Cirrus Logic
- Computer Microtechnology
- Cypress
- Four Phase
- Linear Technology
- National Semiconductor
- LSI
- PMC-Sierra
- Rheem Semiconductor
- Seed Technology
- Sequoia Capital (via Bill McDonald)
- Synaptics
- Synertek
- VLSI Technology
- Wafer Scale Integration
- Xilinx
- Zilog
Venture Capital Funded by Kleiner Perkins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiner_Perkins
- Amazon
- America OnLine (AOL) (now Verizon)
- Brio Technology
- Electronic Arts (EA)
- Flextronics
- Genentech (now Roche)
- Hybritech
- Intuit
- Lotus Development (now IBM)
- LSI Logic
- Macromedia (now Adobe)
- Netscape (purchased by AOL, now Verizon)
- Quantum
- Segway
- Sun Microsystems (now Hewlett Packard)
- Tandem Computers
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