The Farm Boy Who Conquered Silicon Valley

 

 

MVP Gene Humphrey’s journey from rural Wyoming to global entrepreneurship proves that hard work and Wyoming grit can take you anywhere.

 

By Tamara Linse

 

The alarm clock rang at 4:30 a.m. on the family farm outside Burns. Before school, there were chores. After school, more chores. For Gene Humphrey, this wasn’t hardship — it was simply life. What he didn’t realize then was that those early mornings and endless days of farm work were building the foundation for a career that would span combat helicopter pilot, government engineer, global entrepreneur and generous philanthropist.

“Growing up on the farm, you got up, and you did your chores before you went to school,” Humphrey says. “And then you came home from school and did your chores again. Everybody had to pull their load to get through.”

That philosophy of pulling your weight would carry Humphrey through the jungles of Vietnam, the corridors of Silicon Valley and eventually back to Wyoming, where he’s now using his success to lift up future generations of students.

 

Army Veteran 
When Humphrey graduated from Burns High School in 1964, college was out of reach financially, so he made a decision that would define his life — he enlisted in the U.S. Army. “We couldn’t really afford to go to college any other way but go on the GI Bill,” he says.

What followed was a military career that reads like something from a Hollywood script. After flight school, Humphrey found himself in Vietnam in January 1967 as a warrant officer helicopter pilot with the 116th Assault Helicopter Company. He flew heavy troop-carrying helicopters before transitioning to B-model gunships and eventually to the Army’s new Cobra attack helicopters, helping develop the tactics that would define helicopter warfare.

But on Feb. 29, 1968, Humphrey’s tour took a dramatic turn when he was shot down. The bullet went through his distal femur, damaging arteries and nerves. This led to eight months of hospitalization, including periods when doctors considered amputation due to severe infection.

It was during those long months of recovery that Humphrey’s farm-bred determination truly showed. “You just keep pushing,” he says. While immobilized in a full-body cast, he read voraciously and focused on getting well. When the Army tried to give him a medical discharge, he refused and convinced leaders to let him become 
a flight instructor instead.

“In Vietnam, getting up every morning at 4:30 and going out to fly another mission really is just an extension of farm life,” Humphrey says. “You work hard. You carry your weight.”

 

Engineer and Entrepreneur 
When Humphrey finally returned from Vietnam, he used the GI Bill to attend the University of Wyoming, earning his mechanical engineering degree in 1973. It was there he discovered something that would serve him throughout his career: A UW education could compete with anyone’s.

“When I worked for the government on engineering projects with people who had degrees from MIT and all the schools that do advanced research, I realized that I could compete with them,” he says. “I just worked harder than they did.”

That work ethic led him to the Laramie Energy Research Center, where he became project engineer for underground coal gasification at Hanna. His first patent came from that work — technology for gasifying coal. 

But Humphrey wasn’t content to just work for the government. An entrepreneurial spirit defines his career. In the 1990s, while still working for the Department of Defense, Humphrey was touring a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Silicon Valley when inspiration struck. He saw a business opportunity that no one else had noticed and filed a patent the next day.

“I realized there was another business opportunity,” he says. “It took me about a year and a half to figure out how to make the material and get a contract with Intel, and then it became a standard industry once Intel adopted it.”

That material — a silicone compound designed to collect microscopic debris during semiconductor manufacturing and testing — became the foundation for International Test Solutions (ITS), the company Humphrey started in his garage in 1998. Over the next 24 years, ITS became the sole-source supplier to almost everyone who makes or tests computer chips, with offices spanning the globe from Singapore to Germany.

As the company’s president and CEO, Humphrey didn’t just manage — he innovated, becoming the inventor or co-inventor on more than 70 U.S. and international patents. When he sold the company in 2022, it marked the end of an era in semiconductor manufacturing.

“Don’t be afraid to fail,” Humphrey says. “Just keep your eyes open. Work hard. You can make most anything happen if you want to.”

9H Research Foundation 

Success could have taken Humphrey anywhere, but his heart remained in Wyoming. While building his Silicon Valley empire, he also was developing the 9H Ranch — a 50,000-acre operation in Albany and Goshen counties running more than 3,000 head of cattle.

More importantly, he was thinking about how to give back to the state and university that shaped him. In 2020, he founded the 9H Research Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing Wyoming students with real-world practical experience.

“I wanted to give kids an opportunity to use their applied skills so they could put something on their resume to say they’d actually done hands-on work,” he says.

The foundation’s projects read like a catalog of 21st century innovation: a 500-kilowatt solar farm for UW, geothermal stock tanks, drones for precision spraying of noxious weeds, and LIDAR technology to optimize irrigation. Each project involves UW students, giving them valuable hands-on experience while solving real agricultural challenges. The power generated by the solar farm goes back into supporting students through scholarships and internships. 

“We use students at the university so they have something for their resumes,” Humphrey says. 

Humphrey’s philanthropy has supported Wyoming students through direct contributions, endowed scholarships and the 9H Foundation. He’s established the Gene Humphrey Professorship in Engineering and scholarship endowments honoring his late mother and sister.

Now serving on the UW Foundation board, Humphrey remains convinced that Wyoming produces a special kind of graduate: “A Wyoming education gives you an advantage because you actually have to work harder. And people generally have never met anybody from Wyoming, 
so they tend to remember you.”

But it’s more than just novelty. It’s the values instilled by the state itself — the same values learned on that farm outside Burns decades ago.
“Flying helicopters in Vietnam gave me the confidence to go out and compete and not be afraid to fail,” Humphrey says. “But the focus and commitment — those were the same thing as working on the farm. You couldn’t let somebody else do your job.”

Asked if he thinks of himself as an MVP, Humphrey deflects with characteristic humility. “I’m just very fortunate to have lived and grown up in Wyoming,” he says. Perhaps that’s the most Wyoming response of all — letting the work speak for itself while always looking for ways to help the next person succeed.

From a farm boy who got up at 4:30 a.m. to do chores to a global entrepreneur who built an empire one innovation at a time, Humphrey embodies the Wyoming spirit — work hard, work smart, and never forget where you came from.

“I hope we can stimulate some more young people from Wyoming to have the opportunity to do what I’ve done,” he says. In a state that has always punched above its weight, that might be Gene Humphrey’s most important innovation yet.