Dr. Michael Jiu-Wei Chen, founder of AITech.

AITech International Corporation.

Founded in 1987 by Dr. Michael Jiu-Wei Chen, AITech is an extremely rare case of a Silicon Valley firm being continuously operated by its founder for a quarter of a century. Armed with a PhD from Caltech, Chen and his team have created and sustained the highly recognized AITech brand in the fields of video conversion and processing technologies. The founding entrepreneurs are still running the company in Silicon Valley in Northern California, with operations in Taiwan and China as well. They maintain a strong percentage of ownership after many rounds of capitalization, due to their faith and continuous support of the company. The company has proven that it can survive in Silicon Valley, a place where the high-tech environment can be extremely costly, brutal and competitive. It is situated in an area with the highest density of tech companies, facing many multinational public companies from the US, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Even so, Dr. Chen has been undaunted by these competitors and even managed to turn many into customers.

As a sharp contrast to recent Silicon Valley successes, AITech’s strategy did not rely on massive buildup of venture and private-equity capital, followed by huge sums from IPO public funding. Such bubble building has damaged the tech industry in the US since 2000.

Chen attributes his ability to overcome difficulties by adopting the advantages of both the US and Asia, especially Chinese culture, philosophy and ethics. It has leveraged the individual industry strengths of Silicon Valley, Taiwan and China. His company has demonstrated a higher degree of resilience and perseverance than many public companies in several rounds of economic crises, including the Asian crisis in 1997, the Silicon Valley dot-com and telecom bubble in 2000 and the current Global Financial Crisis. Chen also commented that AITech's focus on patenting technologies, brand-building and international operations have helped it gain the honor as a Chinese-Led Top 50 Global Tech Company. AITech and Chen's early promotion to develop bridge technologies between computers and television have also spawned the recent growth of products using next-generation PC, TV and tablet video.