I have been using Microchip since 1985.
Microchip didn't exist until 1987, although "PIC" chips did.
The PIC or Peripheral Interface Controller was designed by General Instruments for use inside their own cable TV boxes to control the front panel and frequency synthesizer. GI and several other large companies like Motorola began separating out the individual business units, and as was popular at the time, the discrete semiconductor businesses were one of the first blocks to be chopped. GI spun off its semiconductor business as "Microchip" in 1987, and they were acquired by a venture capital group in 1989.
One of my little "home projects" consumed about 1/4 MILLION PIC16C54's in 1993 getting me a lot of free stuff from Microchip. The SMD version struck gold again in 1995 with the PIC16C621.
Motorola would announce plans to kill off its discrete semiconductor business in 1998. Before the axe fell a group of private equity people would arrange for an "employee owned" buyout which became ON Semiconductor.
It is interesting to see how both of these spin-offs succeeded and flourished while both their parent companies have died. GI ate up most of the smaller players in the cable TV box business before being swallowed itself by Motorola.
Motorola has since been systematically been dismantled and sold off piece by piece by the Wall Street Wizards who put 100,000 people out of work for fun and profit. Motorola's cable box division was sold to Arris, their strongest competitor. Most of the major cable MSO's have since switched to Samsung boxes. Motorola spun off its remaining semiconductor business as Freescale which has been sold at least twice since, now belonging to NXP. Their cell phone division is now owned by Lenovo, and the networks division (cell tower equipment) was sold to Nokia.......
A good chunk of EVERYBODY'S silicon is fabricated by TSMC (Taiwan Semi Manufacturing Corp) and packaged at AMKOR (AMerica, KORea).