The World's Most Secretive Start-up

Buzz is king in Silicon Valley, and at this moment in history, nobody has bigger buzz than the Transmeta Corp. That's only natural, because everything about Transmeta is secret. Like many start-ups, Transmeta has no announced products. But unlike those other IPO-seeking missiles, it has never issued a press release. Nor does it have a p.r. department. No one even knows how many people work there. Or what they're working on.

Naturally, Transmeta, like most high-tech start-ups, has lots of venture capital upwards of $12 million, in fact. But few of Transmeta's peers can claim funding from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, the third richest person in the world. Oh, and Transmeta just happens to employ Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system and arguably the most famous computer programmer on the Net. MORE >>