In Silicon Valley, it could be argued that size means everything — specifically when it comes to a company’s workforce. For a region that covers about 50 miles of California soil, Silicon Valley manages to house the majority of the world’s mightiest corporations and brands. Tech giants like Oracle, Apple and Google have steadily flourished over the decades, claiming their own pieces of valuable turf in this high-powered, competitive landscape.
Boasting countless acquisitions and exits, these huge organizations naturally require armies of people to help them do business and stay at the top of their game. With some companies exceeding 100,000 employees, the region is naturally brimming with tech talent, and with so much talent comes an even greater amount of fortitude. At 15 of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies, the strength of the people rivals that of the region itself.
Largest Tech Companies in Silicon Valley
- Apple- 188,000+ Employees
- Hewlett Packard- 186,000+ Employees
- Google- 184,000+ Employees
- Oracle- 169,000+ Employees
- Intel- 128,000+ Employees
- Cisco- 91,000+ Employees
- Facebook- 60,000+ Employees
- Broadcom- 45,000+ Employees
- Adobe- 24,000+ Employees
- eBay- 24,000+ Employees
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 24,000+
What they do: Founded by Charles Geschke and John Warnock in 1982, Adobe leads the digital media and marketing solutions industry. The company’s tools and services allow customers to create sophisticated digital content, deploy it across media, and measure and optimize it over time. Adobe’s main products include Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat and Dreamweaver, while the company’s solutions encompass Adobe Document Cloud, Creative Cloud and Experience Cloud. In addition to having $11.2 billion in estimated annual revenue, the company has acquired over 50 organizations including Oculus Medium, Magento Commerce and Livefyre.
Location: Cupertino
Number of employees: 188,000+
What they do: Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple is the most valuable brand in the world, designing and developing some of the most popular consumer electronics, personal computers and software ever created. While the company has been faced with financial hardships in the past, this tech giant still dominates the industry, boasting over $260 billion in estimated annual revenue. Despite being mostly known for the iPhone and Macintosh computer, Apple has tried its hand at a variety of other products in the past including a digital camera, video gaming console and even a clothing line. Since its inception, the organization has acquired 111 companies, with one of the most recent being Xnor.ai, which was purchased for $200 million.
Location: Santa Clara
Number of employees: 14,000+
What they do: Established in 2000, Avaya creates intelligent communications experiences for customers and employees, building open, converged and innovative solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration. Working with large corporations, government agencies and small businesses, the company offers office phone systems that incorporate Internet Protocol (IP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) telephony, messaging, web access and interactive voice response. With an estimated annual revenue of over $2 billion, Avaya has acquired a total of 18 organizations such as Spoken Communications, Esna Technologies and ITNavigator.
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 45,000+
What they do: Founded in 1991, Broadcom designs, develops and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. The company’s solutions cover enterprise storage, broadband and wired networking, wireless and mobile communications, and data center networking and storage. Their products include storage adapters, wireless embedded solutions and RF components, embedded and networking processors, custom silicon, and motion control encoders. With an estimated annual revenue of $22.6 billion, Broadcom has had five exits including Tilera, BroadLight and Radiata.
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 91,000+
What they do: Founded in 1984, Cisco provides hardware, software and service offerings to create Internet solutions that make networks possible. Since its founding, the company has led the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Working primarily with large enterprises, commercial businesses, service providers and consumers, Cisco specializes in routing and switching, home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security and wireless technology. With 222 acquisitions under its belt, the company boasts $52 billion in estimated annual revenue.
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 24,000+
What they do: Established initially as AuctionWeb in 1995, eBay is a global platform that connects millions of buyers and sellers, using PayPal to power transactions. The company allows products to be sold through a silent auction or through the Buy It Now feature, which enables users to purchase items at a set price. Their specialized marketplaces such as StubHub and eBay Classifieds are used in more than 1,000 cities worldwide. In addition to 65 acquisitions, eBay has had 13 exits including Meetup, Skype and Magento Commerce.
Location: Menlo Park
Number of employees: 60,000+
What they do: Since its inception inside a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has steadily earned its status as one of the world’s most powerful brands. While the social networking site was initially intended for college students, it’s now used by over two billion people worldwide. The company has acquired 81 companies including WhatsApp and Instagram. In addition to inspiring a hit feature film, Facebook has integrated more than simple social networking into its site, adding features like virtual reality experiences and video chats. The company boasts more than $66 billion in annual estimated revenue and over 23 billion monthly visitors.
Location: Mountain View
Number of employees: 184,000+
What they do: Google first began as a “web crawler” project called BackRub in 1996. Today, the company is more than merely a search engine, offering dozens of products and services. With an estimated annual revenue of over $155 billion, Google is undoubtedly one of the mightiest members of the Silicon Valley scene. At the company’s headquarters, known as the Googleplex, employees are treated to indoor slides, nap pods, award-winning cafeterias and other world-class benefits. Unsurprisingly, Google ranks number one globally for the number of monthly web visitors, capping out at a mind-blowing 79,158,862,102.
Location: Palo Alto
Number of employees: 186,000+
What they do: Often acknowledged as the original Silicon Valley startup, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise leads the enterprise technology industry. The company provides technology and services to organizations around the world to help make IT more efficient, productive and secure. After its founding in 1939, Walt Disney Studios became the company’s first customer, purchasing eight audio oscillators for use in the production of the film “Fantasia.” As the decades moved on, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise continued to break ground on new technologies, developing a prototype for the first personal computer as well as the first desktop calculator. The company has several offices around the world and holds an estimated $29.1 billion in annual revenue.
Location: Santa Clara
Number of employees: 128,000+
What they do: Established in 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, Intel is dedicated to delivering advances in performance, power and connectivity across a wide range of data-centric workloads, enabling customers to harness the power of raw data. While the company is mostly known for its processors, which power personal computers, laptops and tablets, they also create a variety of other transformative products that span architecture, memory, software and security. Intel has acquired 97 organizations since its inception including Barefoot, Smart Edge and Habana. Their estimated annual revenue is over $70 billion.
Location: Redwood Shores
Number of employees: 169,000+
What they do: Computer programmers Larry Ellison and Bob Miner founded Oracle in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories to develop a revolutionary data management program. The company released Oracle in 1979, which became the earliest commercial relational database program to use SQL. As the organization grew in prominence throughout the twentieth century, it earned its status as a global database management leader. Over the years, Oracle has acquired over 130 companies including PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems and DataFox.
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 26,000+
What they do: Founded in 1998, PayPal is dedicated to democratizing financial services to make managing and moving money a right for all citizens. Upon its establishment, the platform became highly popular among internet auction shoppers, prompting eBay to acquire it for over a billion dollars in 2002. To maintain superior identity theft protection, PayPal implemented sophisticated anti-phishing and anti-hacking measures, developing a portable device that requires manual activation before a transfer is processed. The company holds over $16 billion in estimated annual revenue and has acquired a total of 22 organizations since its inception.
Location: Palo Alto
Number of employees: 30,000+
What they do: Established in 2003 by Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, Tesla was created to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy through affordable electric vehicles. The company’s range of vehicles are designed with a variety of futuristic features such as biohazard air filters and driverless technology. In addition to manufacturing cars, Tesla makes scalable energy products like the Powerwall, Powerpack and Solar Roof. With a total of six acquisitions and an estimated annual revenue of over $25 billion, the company holds its place as one of the most powerful organizations in the region.
Location: Palo Alto
Number of employees: 28,000+
What they do: Founded in 1998, VMWare provides compute, cloud, mobility, networking and security offerings to form a digital foundation that powers apps, services and experiences. The company enables unprecedented freedom and flexibility in how clients build and evolve IT environments, supplying software that allows business owners to simply and securely access the apps and data they need from anywhere. Besides acquiring 44 organizations including Nyansa and Carbon Black, VMWare has had eight exits, with Square and Pivotal Labs among the most notable ones.
Location: San Jose
Number of employees: 22,000+
What they do: Established in 1970, Western Digital helps customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. The company began to flourish during the 1970s through the sale of its calculator chips, becoming the largest independent calculator chipmaker in the world. Today, Western Digital takes part in a wide range of groundbreaking research, some of which relates to autonomous vehicles, smartphones and drones. Boasting more than $17 billion in estimated annual revenue, the company has acquired 12 organizations including Kazan Networks, Tegile Systems and SanDisk.
