In three decades of ranking the largest technology companies in the greater Silicon Valley measured by sales, hundreds of companies have come and gone from the annual SV150 list. Here are the departures from this year s list.
Spansion: Originally founded under a different name as part of a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu, Spansion was taken over by AMD in 2003, renamed and spun off on its own. Now, it has merged with Cypress Semiconductor, which is likely to move higher on the SV150 list in 2016 after a full year as a combined company.
Silicon Image: The Sunnyvale chip company was acquired by Lattice Semiconductor in a deal that topped $600 million. Silicon Image had managed to make mobile chips the majority of sales, a big selling point.
Oplink Communications: The Fremont optical networking company was acquired by Koch Industries, the company run by the politically active Koch brothers. The deal, worth more than $400 million, merged Oplink with Koch s Illinois-based optical-networking firm, Molex.
OpenTable: The restaurant-reservations company and Yelp rival was acquired by Priceline for $2.8 billion in 2014, part of an acquisition battle with online-travel rival Expedia. The San Francisco company still operates independently and kept its management team.
Trulia: Less than two years after an initial public offering that valued it at less than half a million dollars, the San Francisco real estate-information site sold to Seattle-based rival Zillow in a $3.5 billion deal. The combined company dwarfs its biggest rival, San Jose-based Move.
Dialogic: The networking-equipment maker was staying on the SV150 by the skin of its teeth while trading for pennies on over-the-counter markets until being acquired by Canadian private equity company Novacap for 15 cents a share. The deal, which included $35.3 million in cash, also wiped out more than $80 million in debt.
LSI: The largest company to depart the list – the San Jose chip firm ranked No. 32 on last year s list – LSI agreed to be acquired by Hewlett-Packard spinoff Avago Technologies for $6.6 billion in late 2013. The deal closed in May 2014, merging LSI with the Singapore-based company.
Actuate: The San Mateo company helped found and support the open-source BIRT software project, which offers businesses big-data tools using the code. As revenues stumbled, Actuate agreed to be acquired by Canadian software company OpenText for $330 million.
Tibco: The San Jose software company agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for about $4.3 billion in 2014, the largest Silicon Valley tech buyout of recent vintage until rival Informatica agreed to a $5.3 billion deal this year. Founder and CEO Vivek Ranadivé, the majority owner of the Sacramento Kings, stepped down after the deal.
iGate: The outsourcing company, formerly of Fremont, packed its bags and moved to the East Coast in 2014, settling in New Jersey.
Audience: Audience s components attempt to help mobile gadgets and other electronic devices better understand and reproduce the human voice. The company lost favor in 2014, however, with sales dropping nearly 30 percent and knocking it off the list for now.
DSP Group: The Los Altos chip company s revenues declined for a second consecutive year and knocked it out of the index.
Telenav: The Sunnyvale company s GPS navigation offering was the first to land in mobile phones and its GPS Navigator is found in certain carriers smartphones and some cars. A second straight year of plunging revenues knocked it off the list.
Exar: The Fremont semiconductor company couldn t boost revenues enough to stay on the list after barely making the cut in 2014.
SciClone Pharmaceuticals: The Foster City company describes its pharmaceutical business as China-centric, with a lead product called Zadaxin, which treats hepatitis and certain kinds of cancer. Revenues gained slightly, but not enough to make the SV150 again.
Pericom Semiconductor: Pericom focuses on maintaining signal integrity throughout electronic systems of any size, from mobile devices to networks. Revenues have been stagnant at best and the company failed to make the list.
Photo: Vivek Ranadivé founded software company Tibco, which was bought by a private equity firm last year. (Photo by Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)
