In 1996, They Sold Their Chip Company For $1.5 Billion. Three Years Later, They Bought It Back For $450 Million. Today It's Worth $150 Billion

Last week, Micron Technology's market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time.

Micron is one of the world's most important memory-chip companies. It makes the chips that allow computers, servers, smartphones, cars, data centers, and AI systems to temporarily store and instantly access the information they need while running. That category of chip is known as DRAM, short for dynamic random-access memory. It is not long-term storage like a hard drive. It is the high-speed working memory that modern computing cannot function without.

And suddenly, the world cannot get enough of it.

The AI boom has created an almost insatiable appetite for memory. Training and running artificial intelligence models requires enormous amounts of data to move quickly through massive computing systems. GPUs get most of the attention, but those GPUs are useless without equally powerful memory and storage infrastructure feeding them data at high speed. As AI data centers have exploded, so has demand for the companies that make, assemble, and distribute memory products.

That is why Micron's stock has gone parabolic. Over the last year, shares have soared nearly 900%, transforming a once-cyclical memory-chip manufacturer into a trillion-dollar AI infrastructure company.

But Micron is not the only memory company riding this wave.

Another beneficiary is a much less famous company, at least outside the computer-hardware world, called Kingston Technology.

Kingston does not fabricate memory chips the way Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix do. It operates one step downstream. Kingston buys memory chips and turns them into the products people and businesses actually use: DRAM modules, SSDs, flash drives, memory cards, and storage solutions for PCs, servers, data centers, gaming systems, embedded devices, and enterprise customers around the world.

In other words, if Micron helps make the raw ingredients of the memory boom, Kingston helps package, test, brand, and distribute those ingredients into finished products.

Another key difference between Kingston and pretty much every other major memory-tech company:

It is not publicly traded. It is privately held.

Not by a private equity firm. Not by a large corporate conglomerate. Not by some sovereign wealth fund. Kingston is 100% owned, in equal 50/50 stakes, by two men, the original co-founders, David Sun and John Tu.

But what makes their rise so incredible is that this ownership structure is practically an accident of history. If not for a massive twist of fate in the late 1990s, David and John wouldn't own the company at all today…

David Sun, left, and John Tu in 1996 (Photo by Al Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

A Rough Start

David Sun and John Tu were both born in Asia, Sun in Taiwan and Tu in mainland China. Both studied electrical engineering. Both immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. And both eventually found themselves in Los Angeles, where they bonded over basketball before going into business together.

Their first major company was called Camintonn.

Founded in 1982, Camintonn made memory-related products at a time when personal computers were beginning to move from hobbyist machines into offices and homes. Sun and Tu sold the company in 1986 for $6 million.

That should have been the beginning of a very comfortable life.

Instead, almost immediately, they got wiped out.

Sun and Tu lost their savings in the Black Monday stock-market crash of October 1987. It was a brutal setback, but it also created the conditions for their greatest business idea.

At the time, the computer industry was dealing with a shortage of surface-mount memory chips. Sun and Tu realized they could design a memory module that used older, more readily available through-hole chips to meet the market's needs. It was not a glamorous idea. It was practical, technical, and perfectly timed.

That same year, they founded Kingston Technology.

Kingston Technology

The company started small, but the formula was powerful. Kingston did not need to fabricate its own chips. It could source memory components from the major manufacturers, assemble them into reliable products, test them obsessively, and build a reputation as the trusted middle layer between the chipmakers and the customers who needed finished memory products.

Kingston became a memory-products company, not a chip-fabrication company. That model proved enormously successful. Kingston became the #1 third-party supplier of DRAM modules in the world. It became a major force in SSDs, flash drives, memory cards, and enterprise storage products. And it did all of that while remaining private, founder-controlled, and unusually low-profile.

Even as Kingston became a multi-billion-dollar behemoth, neither David Sun nor John Tu ever took a corner office or a private suite. For decades, they sat in standard, open-air cubicles right in the middle of the main sales floor so they were constantly accessible to their team. It showed they never lost their garage-startup humility.

Then, in 1996, Sun and Tu made the kind of deal that most founders would have considered the end of the story.

They sold 80% of Kingston to SoftBank for $1.5 billion.

For two immigrant engineers who had been financially wiped out less than a decade earlier, it was an almost unimaginable outcome. And they did something with the money that instantly became part of tech-industry legend:

They gave more than $100 million of the windfall to their employees as bonuses.

Hundreds of Kingston employees shared in the payout. Longtime workers received life-changing checks. That alone would have made David Sun and John Tu beloved founder folklore. After the $100 million employee gift, David and John each received $700 million pre-tax while still each retaining a 10% stake in Kingston.

But the real twist came three years later.

The SoftBank Boomerang

In 1996, SoftBank was one of the most aggressive technology investors in the world.

The Japanese telecom and investment giant, led by Masayoshi Son, was pouring money into internet, telecom, and computer-related companies. Kingston fit the moment perfectly. It was profitable, growing, and positioned in one of the most important areas of the PC supply chain.

Unfortunately, SoftBank's timing turned out to be terrible.

By 1999, SoftBank was shifting its attention toward internet investments and needed cash. The relationship with Kingston had also not unfolded as planned. Kingston was still a strong business, but it was not the kind of hyper-growth internet asset that SoftBank wanted to prioritize during the dot-com frenzy.

So just three years after buying 80% of Kingston for $1.5 billion, SoftBank sold that exact same stake back to Sun and Tu for… $450 million.

So putting it all together, David and John each received $700 million, gave their employees $100 million, watched their buyer change strategy, then regained control of the company at a 70% discount.

It is one of the greatest sell-high, buy-low moves in technology history.

From that point forward, David Sun and John Tu owned 100% of Kingston again, split evenly between them. They easily could have relaxed and run the business on autopilot from a private island, not really caring about growth or innovation. That's not what they did.

The Memory Boom

For years after the SoftBank buyback, Kingston remained exactly the kind of company most people never think about, which is part of what made it so valuable. If you upgraded the RAM in a desktop computer, bought a USB flash drive, installed an SSD, or worked in a business that needed reliable server memory, there was a decent chance Kingston was somewhere in the supply chain.

The company became the quiet giant of the memory-products channel.

Because Kingston is privately held, we do not know its annual revenue. Last year, Forbes estimated Kingston's revenue at $14.4 billion, which was enough to rank it as the 28th largest private company in America.

David and John's Net Worths

A decade ago, David and John were both worth around $4 billion. Between 2015 and 2025, their net worths bounced from around $5 billion to around $8 billion. Exactly 12 months ago, they were both worth $12 billion.

Today, David Sun and John Tu are BOTH worth $75 billion. They are among the richest people in California and tied for #21 on our list of the richest people on earth.

The Ultimate Quiet Winners

David Sun and John Tu didn't set out to build a massive private empire. They just wanted to survive after losing everything in 1987. But through a combination of brilliant market positioning, unrelenting hustle, and arguably the greatest corporate buyback in business history, they secured total control over a foundational piece of the modern tech ecosystem.

Today, they stand as the ultimate testament to the power of staying private and playing the long game. While Wall Street obsesses over the next quarterly earnings report, Sun and Tu remain totally insulated from the chaos—each quietly commanding a $75 billion fortune, split evenly, right down the middle, just like always.