Curated playlist
Software companies of the United States
- MicrosoftBill Gates claimed he had a working BASIC program before he had written any of it.
- TumblrTumblr sold in 2019 for less than $3 million. Yahoo had paid $1.1 billion for it in 2013.
- Amazon (company)Amazon started in a converted garage under the name Cadabra. Jeff Bezos began the online bookstore there in 1994.
- YahooIn 2002, Yahoo offered $3 billion to buy Google, and Google's leaders said no. Google reportedly wanted $5 billion.
- IBMIBM began in 1911 as a merger of four companies, including a meat slicer maker.
- Twitch (service)Google reportedly had a deal to buy Twitch, then Amazon bought it. Amazon paid just under one billion dollars in 2014.
- CourseraTwo Stanford professors left the university to build Coursera. Their online courses drew huge numbers of students.
- ElevenLabsIn March 2026, ElevenLabs pledged a billion dollars in free voice restoration technology.
- IntelIntel almost called itself "Moore Noyce," which sounds like "more noise."
- PalantirPalantir Technologies takes its name from a "seeing stone" in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium: a crystal orb through which distant events could be observed, and power exercised. Peter Thiel chose that name deliberately in 2003, when he and…