In 1980, Idaho’s ‘French Fry King’ Acquired 40% Of A Struggling Startup Called Micron, Operating Out Of A Boise Dentist’s Office. His Stake Would Be Worth Well Over $400 Billion Today, If Any Of It Were Still In His Descendants’ Hands.
A potato empire built on frozen fries and handshake deals sounds like an unlikely launching pad for one of the most lucrative bets in American business history, yet a single $1 million check written in 1980 set off a chain…
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Micron Technology was founded on October 5, 1978. It started in the basement of a dentist’s office in Boise, Idaho, by Ward Parkinson, Joe Parkinson, Dennis Wilson and Doug Pitman. In 1980, J.R. Simplot invested $1 million for a 40% stake in the young company.
That company is now Micron (NASDAQ:MU | MU Price Prediction), and its market capitalization stands at $1,222,319,456,040.
A Potato Magnate Who Took 40% of a Chip Startup
Simplot started as a hog farmer as a teenager and built a potato and food-processing empire. He was widely called the French Fry King, a label Fortune used in a 1995 headline about how America’s french fry king made billions more in semiconductors.
He became the original frozen-fry supplier to McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) through a handshake deal with Ray Kroc in 1967.
A potato man with no semiconductor background took 40% of a memory chip startup operating out of a dentist’s basement.
How a 40% Stake Shrank While Its Value Exploded
Over the following decades, Simplot’s stake diluted as Micron raised capital. By 1994, it stood at roughly 20%, a position valued at approximately $4 billion at the time. By September 2000, it was down to 3.6%.
Dilution is simple once the mechanism is clear. Existing owners keep the same number of shares. But when a company issues new shares to raise money, those shares represent a smaller slice of a larger company. Building a capital-hungry chip business requires repeated trips to investors, and each trip reduces the percentage held by early backers.
That mechanism is what turns the headline into a hypothetical. Simplot’s percentage fell as the company grew around it. This is the ordinary path for nearly every early stake in a business that lasts long enough to become enormous. Readers who want to trace Micron’s share structure over time can review the company’s filings on SEC EDGAR.
Micron Today Sits Past the Trillion-Dollar Mark
Micron shares traded at $1,082.28 as of 7:59 PM Eastern on September 25, 2026, up 0.16% in the session, with the price delayed by roughly fifteen minutes. The run has been extraordinary: the stock is up 279.44% year to date and up 591.22% over the past year.
Micron’s market cap crossed $1 trillion on May 26, 2026, and it has continued higher since that milestone, which is why the current figure is larger. The company remains headquartered in Boise, and its investor relations site carries its official disclosures. Investors can keep an eye on the stock heading into Micron’s next earnings report, which recent CNBC coverage flags as coming up.
A $400 Billion Counterfactual, Clearly Fenced
An full 40% stake would be worth roughly $400 billion today. That figure describes what the stake would have been worth had it never been diluted, but it was diluted, so the number belongs to an imaginary version of history, and no one holds it.
Simplot died in 2008, and neither he nor his descendants hold a disclosed position in Micron today.
One of the Great Returns in American Business
This is a story about a fortune made. A $1 million investment was worth roughly $4 billion at one point. It ranks among the great returns in American business history, whatever the full number might have been.
The hypothetical draws attention because of its sheer scale. Simplot backed the company early, held through years when Micron needed repeated injections of capital, and made a great deal of real money along the way.
A basement under a dentist’s office in Boise. A potato magnate’s $1 million check in 1980. A company now valued at $1,222,319,456,040.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
