How Henry built the fortune
Henry Samueli is an engineer whose fortune grew out of a classroom. While teaching electrical engineering at UCLA, he worked on the digital signal processing techniques that allow large amounts of data to travel over cable, copper telephone lines and wireless links. In 1991 he and Henry Nicholas, one of his former doctoral students, started Broadcom, each putting in a modest amount of their own money and working at first from a condominium in Southern California.
Broadcom designed chips for cable modems, set top boxes and networking equipment just as home internet access was spreading. Its products became standard inside the equipment that cable operators and telecom companies sent into millions of homes. The company went public in 1998, and its valuation climbed rapidly during the internet boom, sharply increasing the value of both founders' stakes.
The second stage of his wealth came through consolidation. In 2016 Avago Technologies acquired Broadcom and took its name, creating a much larger company led by Hock Tan. Samueli stayed on as chairman of the combined business and kept a large shareholding. The company then expanded through further acquisitions in networking, storage and infrastructure software, and later benefited from strong demand for custom chips and networking gear used in artificial intelligence data centers. Through all of these changes, his wealth has remained closely tied to a single company that he helped build from a two person start.
Companies and holdings
His main asset is his stake in Broadcom Inc., where he serves as chairman of the board. Beyond the chip business, he and his wife, Susan Samueli, have built a significant presence in sports and entertainment in Orange County:
- The Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League, bought in 2005.
- The management company that operates the Honda Center arena in Anaheim.
- Real estate development around the arena, known as OCVibe.
The couple also holds investments through family offices and charitable entities.
Unlike many founders, he has kept a large part of his original stake for more than three decades, through the dot com crash, the backdating investigation and the merger with Avago. As Broadcom grew through acquisitions such as CA Technologies, Symantec's enterprise security unit and VMware, his shares came to represent a slice of a much bigger and more diversified company than the one he started.
Early life and career
Samueli was born in 1954 in Buffalo, New York, to parents who had survived the Holocaust in Poland and emigrated to the United States. The family moved to Los Angeles, where his parents ran a liquor store and he helped out while growing up. He showed an early interest in electronics, building a radio as a boy.
He studied electrical engineering at UCLA, earning a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a doctorate. He worked at TRW on military communications systems and then joined the UCLA faculty in 1985, where he became a professor and met Henry Nicholas. He continued to teach for years after Broadcom was founded and served as the company's chief technical officer. Colleagues have described him as the technical architect of the company in its first years, while Nicholas ran sales and operations as chief executive.
Philanthropy and public life
The Samuelis are among the most prominent donors in Southern California. The engineering schools at both UCLA and the University of California, Irvine carry the Samueli name after large gifts from the couple. The Samueli Foundation also funds integrative health research, education programs and Jewish community causes.
In 2008 he was caught up in a federal investigation of stock option backdating at Broadcom and pleaded guilty to a charge of making a false statement to regulators. A federal judge later rejected the plea agreement and vacated the conviction, and civil charges were subsequently dismissed. He has remained chairman of Broadcom since the Avago merger and continues to be closely involved with the Ducks and the arena development in Anaheim.
He has also been elected to the National Academy of Engineering and has received honors for his technical work in broadband communications. In public appearances he tends to speak about engineering education, the importance of research universities and the economic future of Orange County, rather than about his personal finances.