Skype is headquartered in Europe but has deep ties to Silicon Valley

Skype is a company headquartered overseas that allows people from all over the world to make phone calls to just about anywhere, but it has especially deep ties to Silicon Valley.

Founded in 2003 in Estonia, Skype has had a presence in the valley since soon after it was acquired by eBay (EBAY) in 2005. After the acquisition, Skype established an office in San Jose and later another in Brisbane.

eBay appointed a succession of executives to run Skype, including Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s former chief financial officer; Eskander E. Kazim, a former Skype executive; and Josh Silverman.

When Skype replaced Silverman last fall, it hired Tony Bates, a former executive at Cisco (CSCO), one of the valley’s biggest companies.

eBay spun off Skype in 2009, selling a majority stake in the company to Silver Lake Partners, a Sand Hill Road-based private equity firm. Menlo Park-based Andreessen Horowitz, owned in part by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, also bought a stake in Skype from eBay.

Last summer, Skype consolidated its Silicon Valley operations into a 90,000-square-foot office space in Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. Since then, the company has been increasing its valley presence, bumping its number of area employees from about 80 last July to nearly 140 last month.

Bates said in December that the company planned to hire as many as 320 workers for its Palo Alto office by the end of this year.

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285.