VMware
Acquired by Broadcom · 2023 · $61B VMware was founded in 1998 in Palo Alto by Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Edward Wang, and Edouard Bugnion, and created the mainstream market for x86 virtualization with its ESX/ESXi hypervisor and vSphere platform. Over two decades it became the backbone of enterprise data centers and expanded into multicloud management, networking (NSX), storage (vSAN), and end-user computing. After spinning out of Dell in 2021, VMware agreed to a roughly $61 billion acquisition by Broadcom, which closed on November 23, 2023. Broadcom eliminated perpetual licenses, consolidated the catalog into a handful of high-priced subscription bundles, cut channel programs, and refocused on the largest accounts — moves that triggered steep price increases and a wave of customers evaluating or migrating off VMware. The independent VMware company and brand were dissolved into Broadcom's software group.
VMware's rise built the virtualized data center that underpins modern cloud computing; its Broadcom-era repricing became the defining cautionary tale of infrastructure-vendor consolidation, accelerating enterprise interest in alternatives like Proxmox, Nutanix, and the public clouds.
vmware.com ↗·Cloud Management & Multicloud·
United States·acquired 
