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Read a company profile
Business model, revenue segments and moats: the questions to ask about any tech company.
How chips get made
Design, manufacturing and packaging, and why one company designs while another builds.
Earnings reports for non-investors
What the quarterly numbers and the call actually tell you about a business.
Tech business glossary
ARR, SaaS, gross margin, fabless, foundry, TAM and other terms in one line each.
Company profiles
Each profile opens with a fact box of details that rarely change: when the company was founded, where it is based, who started it and what it sells. We leave out share prices, revenue totals and headcounts because they move every quarter and are better read straight from the source.
Microsoft
Founded 1975. Operating systems, productivity software, cloud computing and gaming.
Apple
Founded 1976. Phones, computers and wearables tied together by its own software and services.
NVIDIA
Founded 1993. Graphics processors and accelerated computing, designed in-house and built by partners.
TSMC
Founded 1987. The company that popularised making chips to other firms' designs.
Why explain instead of report
Tech news tends to focus on what happened today: a launch, a lawsuit, a share price move. Without the background, it is hard to tell whether a story matters. If you know that a company earns most of its money from subscriptions, a price change means something different than it would for a company that sells hardware once.
So the guides here cover the slow-moving parts:
- Business models. One-off sales, subscriptions, advertising, licensing and platform fees each behave differently when the economy turns.
- Supply chains. Most well-known chip brands do not own a factory. Knowing who designs and who manufactures explains a lot of industry news.
- Disclosure. Listed companies publish a large amount of information for free. Learning to read it beats relying on summaries.
How we keep pages accurate
- Stable facts only. Founding dates, headquarters and founders are well documented and do not change.
- Dated checks. Every fact box says when it was checked, so you can judge how fresh it is.
- Primary sources first. For anything numerical, we point you to the company's own investor relations pages and annual reports.
- No predictions. We do not forecast results, rate shares or suggest what to buy.
Nothing on Bolts Tech is financial advice. If you are making an investment decision, read the company's own filings and consider speaking to a licensed adviser.