Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ: TXN)

Texas Instruments is the world's largest analog semiconductor company, with about $18 billion in annual revenue. Analog chips are the unglamorous workhorses of electronics — they convert real-world signals (temperature, sound, voltage) into digital data. TI's chips are in everything from cars to industrial equipment to smartphones. The company owns and operates its own fabs, a strategic advantage that's becoming increasingly valuable.

Two main segments: Analog (~75% of revenue) and Embedded Processing (~17%). The beauty of analog is longevity — product life cycles are 10+ years, and TI has over 80,000 products serving 100,000+ customers. No single customer accounts for more than 10% of revenue. TI is investing heavily in new 300mm wafer fabs in Texas to drive down per-unit costs.

Founded in 1951 as a rename of Geophysical Service Incorporated, which had been doing oil exploration since 1930. TI invented the integrated circuit in 1958 (Jack Kilby, who later won the Nobel Prize). The company exited the mobile phone business in the 2000s and sold its calculator-famous education technology. The strategic pivot to analog and embedded under CEO Rich Templeton (2004-2023) transformed the company's margins and returns.