A group of architects, landscape architects, and urban planners from the Bay Area, founded in late 1939 through the merging of two groups of architects, one from San Francisco and the other from the University of California, Berkeley, called themselves Telesis.
The initial group of shareholders was led by Portuguese investment bank Banco Espírito Santo, Portuguese conglomerate Amorim and USA's Pacific Telesis, owner of mobile operator PacTel Cellular.