Formed in 1971, Exar Corporation is an American semiconductor manufacturer which was acquired by MaxLinear in May 2017 and maintained as a wholly owned subsidiary. MaxLinear has subsequently discontinued production of Exar's most popular products, including the RS-232 interface chips, and the unique XR-2206 function generator. MaxLinear was founded in 2003 in Carlsbad, California by "eight semiconductor industry veterans." MaxLinear provides highly integrated radio-frequency (RF) analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products for broadband communications applications.

Since the company was founded in 2003, customers have relied on MaxLinear technology to build a broad range of equipment including: wireless carrier access for macro base stations and active antenna systems; microwave & mm-Wave backhaul/fronthaul infrastructure; fiber-optic modules for data center, metro, and long-haul transport networks; all-flash storage array systems; electronic point-of-sale equipment; IoT gateways; ethernet switches; cable DOCSIS broadband modems and gateways; and wireline connectivity devices for in-home networking applications.

By May 2010, MaxLinear employed 135 people. 

• In May 2015, MaxLinear acquired Entropic Communications. 
• In April 2016, MaxLinear bought Microsemi's wireless backhaul business, adding about 30 workers to its workforce. 
• In May 2016, MaxLinear announced it would buy Broadcom's "wireless backhaul infrastructure for 80 million in cash," in what was its second acquisition for the year. In the Broadcom deal, MaxLinear took on about 120 additional employees. 
• On February 8, 2017, Maxlinear announced the acquisition of Marvell Technology Group's G.hn business, for $21.0 million in cash . 
• On March 29, 2017, MaxLinear Inc. announced it would buy Exar Corporation for about $661.6 million cash. The acquisition of Exar Corp for $687 million was completed in May 2017.
• MaxLinear acquired Intel’s Home Gateway Platform Division (formerly Lantiq) in 2020.
• In 2020 MaxLinear acquired NanoSemi for its machine learning techniques to improve signal integrity and power efficiency in communication and artificial intelligence systems.
• As of 2017, MaxLinear is on the Multimedia over Coax Alliance board of directors as well as Arris, Broadcom, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Echostar, Intel, and Verizon.

Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D. has served as our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer since the company’s inception in September 2003 and is also a cofounder of the company. From July 1996 to July 2002, Dr. Seendripu served in both engineering & engineering management roles developing integrated radio frequency & mixed-signal systems-on-chip solutions addressing wireless and broadband communications markets. He has previously worked at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (predecessor of Skyworks), Broadcom Corporation, and Silicon Wave Inc. (acquired by Qualcomm). From 1990 to 1996 Dr. Seendripu served as a graduate research assistant at the Lawrence Berkeley Livermore National Laboratories, and at the Electronics Research Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley.

Dr. Seendripu received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. in Materials Science Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, a B. Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and a M.B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.