22 March 1993: Intel introduces the Pentium
Intel launched the Pentium processor, ditching numbered names like 486 partly because numbers could not be trademarked. The Pentium brand, backed by the Intel Inside marketing campaign, made a component consumers never saw into a household name. A floating-point bug in 1994 forced a costly recall, but Intel dominated the PC chip market through the 1990s. Branding a chip was a marketing masterstroke.
The lesson: Turning an invisible component into a consumer brand can create an extraordinarily durable advantage.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Intel at the start of 1995 → $10,256 today, vs $14,783 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1995, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 10.3 times the money, but $4,526 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Intel teaches: Market leadership is not permanent; Intel's manufacturing edge looked unassailable for decades and eroded through a handful of missed bets and execution slips.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $3.90 | $10,256 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $41.00 | $976 | $4,626 |
| 2003 | $16.00 | $2,500 | $7,727 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Intel? Every starting year and the full story →
More Intel history
- 6 June 2005: Apple announces a switch to Intel chips
- 18 July 1968: Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore found Intel
- 1 November 1999: Microsoft and Intel join the Dow
- 15 November 1971: Intel advertises the first microprocessor
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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