Final week, Micron Expertise’s market cap crossed $1 trillion for the primary time.
Micron is without doubt one of the world’s most necessary memory-chip corporations. It makes the chips that permit computer systems, servers, smartphones, vehicles, information facilities, and AI techniques to quickly retailer and immediately entry the knowledge they want whereas operating. That class of chip is named DRAM, brief for dynamic random-access reminiscence. It’s not long-term storage like a tough drive. It’s the high-speed working reminiscence that fashionable computing can not operate with out.
And out of the blue, the world can not get sufficient of it.
The AI increase has created an nearly insatiable urge for food for reminiscence. Coaching and operating synthetic intelligence fashions requires huge quantities of knowledge to maneuver shortly by means of large computing techniques. GPUs get a lot of the consideration, however these GPUs are ineffective with out equally highly effective reminiscence and storage infrastructure feeding them information at excessive pace. As AI information facilities have exploded, so has demand for the businesses that make, assemble, and distribute reminiscence merchandise.
That’s the reason Micron’s inventory has gone parabolic. Over the past yr, shares have soared practically 900%, reworking a once-cyclical memory-chip producer right into a trillion-dollar AI infrastructure firm.
However Micron will not be the one reminiscence firm using this wave.
One other beneficiary is a a lot much less well-known firm, a minimum of outdoors the computer-hardware world, known as Kingston Expertise.
Kingston doesn’t fabricate reminiscence chips the way in which Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix do. It operates one step downstream. Kingston buys reminiscence chips and turns them into the merchandise individuals and companies really use: DRAM modules, SSDs, flash drives, reminiscence playing cards, and storage options for PCs, servers, information facilities, gaming techniques, embedded units, and enterprise prospects around the globe.
In different phrases, if Micron helps make the uncooked components of the reminiscence increase, Kingston helps bundle, take a look at, model, and distribute these components into completed merchandise.
One other key distinction between Kingston and just about each different main memory-tech firm:
It’s not publicly traded. It’s privately held.
Not by a personal fairness agency. Not by a big company conglomerate. Not by some sovereign wealth fund. Kingston is 100% owned, in equal 50/50 stakes, by two males, the unique co-founders, David Solar and John Tu.
However what makes their rise so unbelievable is that this possession construction is virtually an accident of historical past. If not for a large accident within the late Nineties, David and John would not personal the corporate in any respect immediately…
David Solar, left, and John Tu in 1996 (Picture by Al Schaben/Los Angeles Occasions by way of Getty Photographs)
A Tough Begin
David Solar and John Tu had been each born in Asia, Solar in Taiwan and Tu in mainland China. Each studied electrical engineering. Each immigrated to the US within the Nineteen Seventies. And each ultimately discovered themselves in Los Angeles, the place they bonded over basketball earlier than going into enterprise collectively.
Their first main firm was known as Camintonn.
Based in 1982, Camintonn made memory-related merchandise at a time when private computer systems had been starting to maneuver from hobbyist machines into workplaces and houses. Solar and Tu offered the corporate in 1986 for $6 million.
That ought to have been the start of a really comfy life.
As a substitute, nearly instantly, they acquired worn out.
Solar and Tu misplaced their financial savings within the Black Monday stock-market crash of October 1987. It was a brutal setback, nevertheless it additionally created the circumstances for his or her best enterprise thought.
On the time, the pc {industry} was coping with a scarcity of surface-mount reminiscence chips. Solar and Tu realized they may design a reminiscence module that used older, extra available through-hole chips to satisfy the market’s wants. It was not a glamorous thought. It was sensible, technical, and completely timed.
That very same yr, they based Kingston Expertise.
Kingston Expertise
The corporate began small, however the system was highly effective. Kingston didn’t must fabricate its personal chips. It might supply reminiscence elements from the key producers, assemble them into dependable merchandise, take a look at them obsessively, and construct a popularity because the trusted center layer between the chipmakers and the purchasers who wanted completed reminiscence merchandise.
Kingston grew to become a memory-products firm, not a chip-fabrication firm. That mannequin proved enormously profitable. Kingston grew to become the #1 third-party provider of DRAM modules on the earth. It grew to become a serious drive in SSDs, flash drives, reminiscence playing cards, and enterprise storage merchandise. And it did all of that whereas remaining non-public, founder-controlled, and unusually low-profile.
At the same time as Kingston grew to become a multi-billion-dollar behemoth, neither David Solar nor John Tu ever took a nook workplace or a personal suite. For many years, they sat in customary, open-air cubicles proper in the course of the primary gross sales flooring in order that they had been continuously accessible to their group. It confirmed they by no means misplaced their garage-startup humility.
Then, in 1996, Solar and Tu made the sort of deal that the majority founders would have thought of the tip of the story.
They offered 80% of Kingston to SoftBank for $1.5 billion.
For 2 immigrant engineers who had been financially worn out lower than a decade earlier, it was an nearly unimaginable final result. And so they did one thing with the cash that immediately grew to become a part of tech-industry legend:
They gave greater than $100 million of the windfall to their workers as bonuses.
A whole bunch of Kingston workers shared within the payout. Longtime employees obtained life-changing checks. That alone would have made David Solar and John Tu beloved founder folklore. After the $100 million worker reward, David and John every obtained $700 million pre-tax whereas nonetheless every retaining a ten% stake in Kingston.
However the true twist got here three years later.
The SoftBank Boomerang
In 1996, SoftBank was one of the crucial aggressive expertise traders on the earth.
The Japanese telecom and funding big, led by Masayoshi Son, was pouring cash into web, telecom, and computer-related corporations. Kingston match the second completely. It was worthwhile, rising, and positioned in one of the crucial necessary areas of the PC provide chain.
Sadly, SoftBank’s timing turned out to be horrible.
By 1999, SoftBank was shifting its consideration towards web investments and wanted money. The connection with Kingston had additionally not unfolded as deliberate. Kingston was nonetheless a robust enterprise, nevertheless it was not the sort of hyper-growth web asset that SoftBank wished to prioritize through the dot-com frenzy.
So simply three years after shopping for 80% of Kingston for $1.5 billion, SoftBank offered that very same stake again to Solar and Tu for… $450 million.
So placing all of it collectively, David and John every obtained $700 million, gave their workers $100 million, watched their purchaser change technique, then regained management of the corporate at a 70% low cost.
It is without doubt one of the best sell-high, buy-low strikes in expertise historical past.
From that time ahead, David Solar and John Tu owned 100% of Kingston once more, cut up evenly between them. They simply might have relaxed and run the enterprise on autopilot from a personal island, not likely caring about progress or innovation. That is not what they did.
The Reminiscence Increase
For years after the SoftBank buyback, Kingston remained precisely the sort of firm most individuals by no means take into consideration, which is a part of what made it so useful. When you upgraded the RAM in a desktop pc, purchased a USB flash drive, put in an SSD, or labored in a enterprise that wanted dependable server reminiscence, there was a good likelihood Kingston was someplace within the provide chain.
The corporate grew to become the quiet big of the memory-products channel.
As a result of Kingston is privately held, we have no idea its annual income. Final yr, Forbes estimated Kingston’s income at $14.4 billion, which was sufficient to rank it as the twenty eighth largest non-public firm in America.
David and John’s Web Worths
A decade in the past, David and John had been each value round $4 billion. Between 2015 and 2025, their internet worths bounced from round $5 billion to round $8 billion. Precisely 12 months in the past, they had been each value $12 billion.
At the moment, David Solar and John Tu are BOTH value $75 billion. They’re among the many richest individuals in California and tied for #21 on our listing of the richest individuals on earth.
The Final Quiet Winners
David Solar and John Tu did not got down to construct a large non-public empire. They only wished to outlive after shedding every part in 1987. However by means of a mixture of good market positioning, unrelenting hustle, and arguably the best company buyback in enterprise historical past, they secured complete management over a foundational piece of the trendy tech ecosystem.
At the moment, they stand as the last word testomony to the facility of staying non-public and enjoying the lengthy recreation. Whereas Wall Avenue obsesses over the subsequent quarterly earnings report, Solar and Tu stay completely insulated from the chaos—every quietly commanding a $75 billion fortune, cut up evenly, proper down the center, similar to all the time.
