NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation (Nippon Electric Company) was founded in Tokyo on 17 July 1899. According to its corporate history, that was the day revised treaties allowing direct foreign investment took effect, and NEC was born as Japan's first company with foreign capital. It was prepared by Kunihiko Iwadare, Takeshiro Maeda, W. T. Carlton and others, who had run the predecessor partnership founded the year before, and Western Electric of the US formally held shares and took part in management. The company was renamed Sumitomo Communication Industries in 1943 and returned to the name Nippon Electric in November 1945.

From telecoms to computers: the "C&C" banner

The computing milestones in its history show how a maker of telephone switches and radio equipment moved into computers.

C&C was how a company that made both communications equipment and computers defined itself, and owning both PCs and mobile phones was that banner put into products. What the PC-9801 meant for Japanese personal computing is left to its own entry.

Supercomputers: from SX to the Earth Simulator

According to its history, NEC's SX-2 supercomputer achieved a measured 1.3 GFLOPS in 1985, which the company describes as the world's fastest. In 2002 it completed the Earth Simulator, planned in 1997 to predict global climate change. The history says the required performance was 1,000 times that of the supercomputers of the day, that NEC put about 1,000 people on it in total, and that it entered service on schedule in March 2002.

On the June 2002 TOP500 list, the Earth-Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (built by NEC, 5,120 cores) ranked first with a LINPACK result of 35,860 GFlop/s. Second place, ASCI White (IBM) in the US, recorded 7,226 GFlop/s, a gap of about five times. NEC's history says it held first place for two and a half years.

What it let go, and what remained

The history also records how the former flagship businesses, semiconductors and PCs, were carved out.

• 2002: Founds NEC Electronics. In 2010 it merges with Renesas Technology to form Renesas Electronics.
• 2006: Spins off its BIGLOBE internet service as NEC BIGLOBE.
• 2009: Founds NEC Casio Mobile Communications.
• 2011: Founds NEC Personal Computers as a joint venture with Lenovo.
• 2018: Acquires Northgate Public Services in the UK and KMD in Denmark. In 2020 it acquires Avaloq, a Swiss financial software company.
• 2023: Begins offering "cotomi", a generative AI built for the Japanese market.

Key events

• 17 July 1899: Founded as Japan's first company with foreign capital.
• 1943: Renamed Sumitomo Communication Industries (back to Nippon Electric in November 1945).
• 1958: NEAC-1102 and NEAC-2201.
• 1977: Koji Kobayashi proposes C&C.
• 1979: PC-8001.
• 1982: PC-9801.
• 1985: SX-2.
• 2002: The Earth Simulator enters service and in June ranks first on the TOP500.
• 2010: NEC Electronics merges with Renesas Technology.
• 2011: NEC Personal Computers founded as a joint venture with Lenovo.
• 2020: Acquires Avaloq.
• 2023: The "cotomi" generative AI.

Key figures

Year ended March 2026 (April 2025 to March 2026), IFRS, from the results presentation of 28 April 2026.

• Revenue: ¥3,582.7 billion (+4.7% year on year) / operating profit: ¥359.9 billion (prior year ¥256.5 billion)
• Adjusted operating profit: ¥386.8 billion (prior year ¥287.2 billion) / non-GAAP operating profit: ¥397.2 billion (prior year ¥311.3 billion)
• Net profit attributable to owners of the parent: ¥270.2 billion (prior year ¥175.2 billion)

Adjusted operating profit is the company's measure that removes items such as the amortisation of intangible assets from acquisitions; non-GAAP operating profit further removes items such as structural reform expenses.

IT Services provides 70% of revenue and almost all of the growth in profit; its adjusted operating margin rose from 10.2% to 13.4%. Social Infrastructure includes aerospace and defence (ANS), which the company singles out as performing strongly. The company that built the PC-9801 and the Earth Simulator has moved both semiconductors and PCs outside, and now earns its money from systems for government and business and from social infrastructure.