STEC, Inc. was originally founded in California in March 1990 as Simple Technology, Inc. which introduced a line of memory upgrades for PCs, notebooks, servers, printers and devices. In 1993, STEC formed the PCMCIA (PC Card) Division and expanded its manufacturing facilities.
In 1994 STEC acquired the flash controller design team from Cirrus Logic and established the OEM sales division.
In 1995, STEC was recognized on the Inc. 500 list as the 50th fastest-growing business in the nation. They introduced IC Tower® TSOP stacking technology the same year. In the same year they delivered its first stacked memory product, which showed that it could create dense memory products. It introduced its first solid-state drives the following year.
In 1996, STEC's European headquarters opened with complete design, manufacturing and logistics capabilities. STEC introduced Solid State flash memory cards the same year.
In 1998, STEC purchased flash memory card developer SiliconTech, and in 1999 they were first to market the 1GB Solid State IDE Storage Devices and SDRAM Modules and also first to market the 320MB Type II CompactFlash.
STEC completed IPO in September, 2000 (Nasdaq: STEC) and went public, but changed its corporate identity in 2001 when it changed its name to SimpleTech. It continued to grow its technology base through two additional acquisitions.
In 2005, STEC purchased Memtech SSD, a developer of solid-state flash drives and purchased Gnutek, a developer of flash-based SSD's in 2006. Also that year they introduced the MACH1 line of Flash products as well as Postage Stamp BGA Stacking technology. The U.S. facility achieves ISO14001-2004 certification for Environmental and the design and development of memory module TDBI (Test-During-Burn-In) systems was also achieved that year.
On February 12, 2007, the consumer product business of SimpleTech was acquired by Fabrik. Also in February 2007 after the divestiture of its consumer business to Fabrik, the company's OEM division was renamed to STEC, Inc. The facilities in Malaysia with complete design, manufacturing and logistics capabilities were also completed in the same year. STEC now has additional locations in Italy, Japan, China, and Taiwan. STEC also introduced the ZeusIOPS Solid State Drive.
In 2008 STEC launched the industry’s first deployment Solid State Drive (ZeusIOPS Solid State Drive) within Enterprise grade storage systems and achieved highest design win for Solid State Vendor within Enterprise storage industry. Also introduced in 2009 was the industry first and only native 4Gb Fibre Channel Solid State Drive (ZeusIOPS 4Gb FC SSD), MACH8 Solid State Drive Family, MACH4 Solid State Drive (World smallest solid state drive), Ultra Mobile Solid State Drive (UM-SSD), the industry’s First Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enabled Solid State Drive (ZeusIOPS SAS SSD), as well as the industry’s Highest Capacity Solid State Drive.
In 2009 STEC reached $1 Billion dollar market cap milestone.
