Intel was the first semiconductor company to reach a $100 billion market capitalization.
Intel achieved the milestone during the technology-stock boom of the late 1990s, when demand for personal computers and its x86 microprocessors drove strong investor enthusiasm. The company’s processors powered a large share of the world’s PCs, and its “Intel Inside” branding made a component maker unusually familiar to consumers.
Intel is sometimes confused with TSMC because both are central to the semiconductor industry, but their business models differ. Intel historically designed and manufactured its own processors, while TSMC became the leading dedicated contract chip manufacturer. Market capitalization is a stock-market measure, so this milestone concerns investor valuation rather than factory capacity or chip shipments.