 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Mathematical computing software |
| Founded | December 7, 1984; 40 years ago (1984-12-07) inPortola Valley, California, U.S. |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
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| Products | MATLAB,Simulink |
| Revenue |  US$1.25 billion (2022)[1] |
Number of employees | 6,000 (2023)[2] |
| Website | mathworks |
The MathWorks, Inc. is an American privately heldcorporation that specializes in mathematical computingsoftware. Its major products includeMATLAB andSimulink, which support data analysis and simulation.
MATLAB was created in the 1970s byCleve Moler, who was chairman of the computer science department at theUniversity of New Mexico at the time. It was a free tool for academics.Jack Little, who would eventually set up the company, came across the tool while he was a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford University.[3][4]
Little and Steve Bangert rewrote the code for MATLAB inC while they were colleagues at an engineering firm.[3][5] They founded MathWorks along with Moler in 1984,[5] with Little running it out of his house inPortola Valley, California.[6] Little would maildiskettes in baggies (food storage bags) to the first customers.[7] The company sold its first order, 10 copies of MATLAB, for $500 to theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in February 1985.[8] A few years later, Little and the company moved to Massachusetts.[6][9] There, Little hired Jeanne O'Keefe, an experienced computer executive, to help formalize the business.[3] By 1997, MathWorks was profitable, claiming revenue of around $50 million, and had around 380 employees.[3]
In 1999, MathWorks relocated to the Apple Hill office complex in Natick, Massachusetts, purchasing additional buildings in the complex in 2008 and 2009,[10] ultimately occupying the entire campus. MathWorks expanded further in 2013 by buyingBoston Scientific's old headquarters campus, which is near to MathWorks' headquarters in Natick.[11]
By 2018, the company had around 3,000 employees in Natick and said it had revenues of around $900 million.[12]
The company's two lead products areMATLAB, which provides an environment for scientists, engineers and programmers to analyze and visualize data and develop algorithms, andSimulink, a graphical and simulation environment formodel-based design of dynamic systems.[13][14] MATLAB and Simulink are used in aerospace, automotive, software and other fields.[15] The company's other products includePolyspace,SimEvents,Stateflow, andThingSpeak.
In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against MathWorks andWind River Systems alleging that an agreement between them violatedantitrust laws. The agreement in question stipulated that the two companies agreed to stop competing in the field of dynamic control system design software, with MathWorks alone selling Wind River's MATRIXx Software and that Wind River would stop all research and development and sales in that field. Both companies eventually settled with the Department of Justice and agreed to sell the MATRIXx software to a third party. MathWorks had total sales of $200 million in 2001, with dynamic control system design software accounting for half of those sales.[16]
MathWorks's Simulink software was found to have infringed 3 patents fromNational Instruments related to data flow diagrams in 2003, a decision which was confirmed by a court of appeal in 2004.[17]
In 2011, MathWorks suedAccelerEyes for copyright infringement in one court, and patent and trademark infringement in another. AccelerEyes acceptedconsent decrees in both cases before the trials began.[18]
In 2012, the European Commission opened anantitrust investigation into MathWorks after competitors alleged that MathWorks refused to grant licenses to its intellectual property that would allow people to create software withinteroperability with its products.[19][20] The case was closed in 2014 without filing any charge.[21]
The logo represents the first vibrational mode of a thin L-shaped membrane, clamped at the edges, and governed by thewave equation, which was the subject of Moler's thesis.[4]
The company annually sponsors a number of student engineering competitions, includingEcoCAR, an advanced vehicle technology competition created by theUnited States Department of Energy (DOE) andGeneral Motors (GM).[22] MathWorks sponsored the mathematics exhibit at London'sScience Museum.[23]
In the coding community, MathWorks hosts MATLAB Central, an online exchange where users ask and answer questions and share code. MATLAB Central currently houses around than 145,000 questions in its MATLAB Answers database.[24] The company actively supports numerous academic institutions to advanceSTEM education (primarily through the use of MathWorks products), including giving funding to MIT Open Courseware and MITx.[25][26]
The Commission decided, as a result of the formal investigation, to close the antitrust proceedings initiated on 29 February 2012 against MathWorks in case AT.39840.
42°18′01″N71°21′01″W / 42.30025°N 71.35039°W /42.30025; -71.35039
