Qualcomm Atheros

Qualcomm Atheros

Formerly	Atheros Communications T-Span Systems
Company type	Subsidiary
Founded	May 1998; 26 years ago (1998-05)
Founder	Teresa H. Meng, John L. Hennessy
Headquarters	San Jose, California, USA
Key people	Craig H. Barratt, CEO 2003-2011 Jack Lazar, CFO 2003-2011 Rick Bahr, Head of Engineering 2000-2013 Bill McFarland, CTO 1999-2015 Colin Born, Corporate Development 2005-2014
Products	Ethernet, WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS, powerline communications, hybrid wired/wireless, location
Parent	Qualcomm
Website	www.qca.qualcomm.com

Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. The company was founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.

On January 5, 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm had agreed to a takeover of the company for a valuation of US$3.7 billion. When the acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011, Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros.^[1]

Qualcomm Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers.^[2]