Two friends sold their company for $1.5 billion and bought it back for $450 million: today it is worth $150 billion

▤ Summary

This article tells the story of Kingston Technology and its founders, John Tu and David Sun. It explains how they sold their first memory business, lost much of their money in the 1987 market crash, and then started Kingston in a California garage. It also describes Kingston’s 1996 sale to SoftBank for $1.5 billion and the later 1999 repurchase of the same stake for $450 million. Today, the company remains privately held and is valued at about $150 billion thanks to strong demand for memory products.

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