Dado Banatao: Founding Father of PC Hardware

Diosdado “Dado” Banatao, a Silicon Valley giant as the  Founding Father of Personal Computer Hardware, was a most practical but quiet nationalist who deserves recognition as a Philippine hero in the global knowledge age. He may already be an international hero in an age where AI is transforming into a digital teammate of human decision makers (Agentic AI).

After the 1986 restoration of Philippine democracy, he was among those who wanted to assist in the innovative reconstruction of the economy, especially in a 21st century technology-led development path to erase poverty.

Being called the Bill Gates of the Philippines added a later mystique to his mission.

I discovered why Dado could legitimately be named alongside Bill Gates during a small dinner hosted by the US after the 1st APEC summit in 1993. Since the Philippines would host the 1996 APEC meetings, I was seated by the host next to Bill Gates himself. I started our conversation by asking how it would be possible to have a $100 personal computer by the start of the new millennium — which is what some senior officials had been hinting at during the APEC meetings in Seattle.

Mr. Gates at first whispered that it was very possible — because a Filipino graduate from Stanford (whom he did not name) had been working to cut hardware costs dramatically for some time. Some guests who overheard the conversation became curious, animating the discussion. Mr. Gates emphasized: that young man’s invention would be revolutionary.

NEW PERSPECTIVE OF HEROES
In the 21st Century, humans need to redefine who are heroes:

In the Agricultural Era, heroes were guardians of land and survival (protecting village, harvest and clan); in the Industrial Age they were builders, soldiers, and nation-makers (not raising armies but standards and aspirations across generations); and, in the Knowledge Age heroes are solvers, connectors, and protectors of humanity (not as warriors of territory but guardians of systems).

Mankind needs new metrics for measuring national greatness for a borderless world, and to regroup humanity — not against intergalactic enemies, but against itself, including the perils from its own AI.

From data to information to knowledge to wisdom, human decision-makers need people like Dado whose view of heroism is no longer the conquest of physical territory, but the expansion of win-win possibilities for all — as sand transforms into microchips.

FOUNDING FATHERS
Dado’s demise on Christmas Day 2025 “marked the end of an era for the “founding fathers” of the personal computer (PC). While Gates built the software world, Banatao built the hardware “expressway” that allowed software to reach billions of people” (this was Gemini AI’s response to my prompt, made on Dec. 27, 2025).

Dado reconnected to his roots. As an expatriate Filipino with an orientation towards science, technology, and development, Dado made a name as a beginning serial entrepreneur (Mostron in 1984; Chips and Technologies in 1985; and S3 Graphics in 1989), a path echoed by a few but high-level Filipino diaspora leaders. These people were responding to a concern for giving assistance to the Philippines, cognizant of the dark chapters of crony capitalism in our authoritarian past.

Among these were former Executive Secretary Rafael M. Salas who quite successfully served as the first head of the UN Fund for Population Activities, and other Filipinos in the UN headquarters in New York. They knew of opportunities for funding expatriate experts to assist countries rising from the dramatic brain drains that had subtly devastated economies like the Philippines’.

3 PHASES OF NATIONAL RE-ENGAGEMENT
Dado’s structured approach to national re-engagement began with his recognition by numerous grantees of the UN Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN, established in 1977) program as an individual capable of contributing to the transformation of the Philippine economy. These were people from universities and Dado’s workplaces in California. This was Phase 1.

The short-term assignments of the UN TOKTEN proved attractive to many STEM experts in the Philippine diaspora compared with the permanent return in the Balik-Scientist program. Permanent return, of course, was not part of Dado’s plans — agile global leaders like him thrive across markets in many continents.

I heard Dado’s name from a few top-level engineers whom I met in Manila during a short TOKTEN assignment at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in July-August 1988. My report for the DFA on development diplomacy concluded with an invitation from then Foreign Affairs secretary Raul Manglapus for me to stay and serve the Philippines in the new government after EDSA I. That is how we met.

In late 1988, Mr. Manglapus created a new unit at the DFA, the Office of International Cooperation in Science and Technology (OICST), which, as its first head, I would help shape. In terms of funding, there were no issues. Aniceto (Chito) Sobrepeña, a former colleague from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), unexpectedly transferred the TOKTEN Philippines portfolio from his office to the DFA OICST, acknowledging its wider and more substantial access to highly skilled diaspora talent.

I offered Dado one such grant years later, but he opted to self-fund his return trip to the Philippines after a DFA Dialogue on Science and Technology Projects in the US, held at the University of San Francisco (USF) in April 1990.

Dado’s ideas then bloomed (in Phase 2) with his advisory support to Filipino expatriates who were mainly STEM and social science experts. Their volunteer services were done through DFA’s OICST Division I, Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) to benefit private and public programs.

Dado’s pathway finally culminated (Phase 3) with him investing in the practical STEM education of Filipinos here and abroad through the Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev). Towards 2010, our conversations about STAC and Philippine education reform were deeply informed by our own experiences in the US — case method, structured internships, cross-disciplinary research for Big Picture systems view, close industry linkages, etc.

Beginning in 2011, Dado spent five years at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), in foreign-faculty-led training of engineering deans nationwide. It resonated with an AIM classroom management technique: other than having faculty from top universities abroad, AIM teachers can also enroll a mix of top education executives as lifelong-learning students together with masteral candidates in management. I found this strategy enables the latter to experience live cases through the weeks of a course I taught for more than 15 years on Regional Integration in Asia focused on education.

LESSONS
As an emigrant from a country impoverished by severe socio-economic inequalities, as experienced by his family in Iguig, Cagayan, the TOKTEN-STAC-PhilDev path must have shaped Dado’s mind through the years.

His mindset moved sequentially from education to innovation, to “technopreneurship,” and to economic transformation. But in all these, Dado preferred the private sector to show the way for 21st century approaches, thus he founded Tallwood Venture Capital in 2000 with his own funds in order to pursue research and development in semiconductor technologies.

I remember a memorable one-on-one conversation in his Atherton home workroom, as we walked through his vast network of people displayed on the walls. He insisted that I introduce him less to politicians but more to industrialists, businesspeople, and academics with a sincere interest in technology for developing the country.

It became the premise for his acceptance of the leadership of the Silicon Valley-San Francisco Chapter of STAC.

(To be continued.)

Dr. Federico “Poch” M. Macaranas, Ph.D. founded and led the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Science and Technology Advisory Council from 1988-1997. He was the chair of the Education Committee of the Management Association of the Philippines from 2023 to 2025. He is a board member of Bayan Innovation Group, Inc.

map@map.org.ph

fmmacaranas@gmail.com