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 National Instruments campus inAustin, Texas | |
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1976; 50 years ago (1976) |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas, Austin, United States |
Key people | Ritu Favre (President) |
| Products | |
| Revenue |  US$1.66 billion (2022) |
| US$192 million (2022) | |
| US$140 million (2022) | |
| Total assets | US$2.36 billion (2022) |
| Total equity |  US$1.16 billion (2022) |
Number of employees | c. 7,000 (Dec. 2022) |
| Parent | Emerson |
| Website | ni |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
TheNational Instruments Corporation, often abbreviated asNI, is an Americanmultinational company headquartered inAustin,Texas. It is a producer ofautomated test equipment,semiconductor production equipment, andvirtual instrumentationsoftware. Common applications includedata acquisition (DAQ),instrument control, system management,machine learning, andvision. Following its acquisition byEmerson Electric in October 2023, NI has operated as the company’s test and measurement business unit.[2]
In 2022, NI sold products to more than 35,000 companies worldwide, with revenues of $1.66 billion USD.[1]
In the early 1970s,James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin were employed at theUniversity of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratories.[3] While working on a project for theU.S. Navy, they utilized early computer technology to collect and analyze data. Dissatisfied with the existing data collection methods, the group decided to create a new product for this purpose. In 1976, they founded a company while working in Truchard's garage.[4] They initially attempted to incorporate under names such as Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but these were rejected. Ultimately, they established the nameNational Instruments.[5]
With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group purchased aPDP-11/04minicomputer and commenced their first project by designing and building aGPIB interface for it.[6] Their initial sale stemmed from acold call toKelly Air Force Base inSan Antonio.[5] At that time, the three founders were still employed at the University of Texas.[7]
In 1977, the company employed its first full-time staff member, Kim Harrison-Hosen. By that time, it had sold a limited number of products. To encourage further business, the company produced and distributed a mailer to 15,000 users of the PDP-11 minicomputer. As sales began to rise, they relocated to a dedicated office space, occupying a 600-square-foot office at 9513 Burnet Road in Austin. Later, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit.[6]
In 1980, Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin resigned from their positions to devote themselves full-time to NI. Soon afterwards, they moved the company to a larger office, renting 5,000 square feet (500 m2) of office space. To assist in generating revenue, the company undertook numerous special projects, including a fuel-pump credit-card system and a waveform generator for U.S. Navy sonar acoustic testing. In 1981, the company reached the $1 million sales mark, leading them to move to a 10,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) office in 1982.[6]
In 1983, NI developed its firstGPIB board to connect instruments toIBM PCs. With the arrival of theMacintosh computer, Kodosky began a research initiative with the assistance of student researchers at the University of Texas into ways to utilize the new interface. This led to the creation of NI's flagship product, theLabVIEW graphical development platform for the Macintosh computer, which was released in 1986.[6] The software allows engineers and scientists to program graphically by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. The following year, a version of LabVIEW, known as LabWindows, was released for the DOS environment.[8]
By 1986, the company had 100 employees. NI opened its first international branch inTokyo the following year.[8]
After outgrowing its rented space, NI relocated to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway in 1990, which the company purchased in 1991. That building, located alongLake Austin near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills Bridge Point."[8]
NI received its first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later that same year, they introduced Signal Conditioning Extensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) to expand the signal-processing capabilities of the PC, and in 1992, LabVIEW was first released forWindows-based PCs andUnix workstations. NI also created the National Instruments Alliance Partner program.[8] In 1993, the company reached the milestone of $100 million in annual sales. In late 1993, NI releasedLabWindows/CVI for C/C++ programmers.. The following year, an employee began experiments with the relatively newWorld Wide Web and developed natinst.com, the company's very first web page.[9]
The company began to run out of room on their approximately 136,000-square-foot (12,600 m2) campus. In 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, located at a 72-acre (290,000 m2) site along North Mopac Boulevard in northern Austin. By this time, NI had reached 1,000 employees.[10] The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, contains dedicated "play" areas, including basketball and volleyball courts, an employee gym, and a campus-wide walking trail. Each of the buildings on the campus is lined with windows and features an open floor plan.[8] Employees had been granted stock in the privately held company as part of their compensation packages. When the company chose to go public in 1995, over 300 current and former employees owned stock. The company was listed on theNasdaq exchange as NATI.[citation needed]
By the late 1990s, the company provided more advanced DAQ boards that could replace vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system.[8] With the company's acquisition of Georgetown Systems Lookout software, NI products were further incorporated into applications run on the factory floor. By 1996, the company had reached $200 million in annual sales and was named toForbes magazine's 200 Best Small Companies list. Over the next several years, NI released machine vision software and hardware. NI also introduced the CompactPCI-basedPXI, an open industry standard for modular measurement and automation, and NITestStand, which provides for tracking high-volume manufacturing tests.[10]
Following the acquisition of the ni.com domain, the company launched the NI Developer Zone to provide access to example programs and sample code. They introduced the NI Developer Zone, which provides end-user developers access to example programs, sample code, and development tips, as well as forums for users and NI employees.[10]
In the 2000s, NI began exporting most of its manufacturing overseas by opening its 144,000-square-foot (13,400 m2) manufacturing plant inDebrecen,Hungary. NI now manufactures nearly 90% of its production inDebrecen and has expanded several times in the last decade. With a multi-million dollar grant from the government, NI increased production in Debrecen by approximately 20%. With new automation processes, headcount increased by only 2%.[11] In 2002, the company dedicated the 379,000-square-foot (35,200 m2) Building C on their Mopac campus, which became the headquarters for the company's R&D operations. The completion of this building allowed NI to move all Austin-based employees to a single location.[10]
The primary company model used was business-to-consumer(B2C). By 2006, NI had opened 21 sales offices in Europe, 12 in the Asia/Pacific region, and additional offices in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.[10] Research and Development centers are located in theUnited States,Germany,India,Romania,China,Canada, andMalaysia.
In 2005, NI acquired Measurement Computing,[12] a provider of low-cost data acquisition products.[citation needed]
In January 2013, NI acquired all outstanding shares of Digilent Inc., which became a wholly owned subsidiary.[13] Digilent was founded in 2000 by two Washington State University electrical engineering professors, Clint Cole and Gene Apperson, and grew to become a multinational corporation with sales of test and development products to universities.[14] Digilent developed the open standardPmod Interface.[citation needed]
On June 16, 2020, It was announced that they were officially changing the company's name to "NI".[15] On May 4, 2021, NI announced the acquisition of monoDrive, a provider of simulation software foradvanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle development.[16] In March 2022, it was announced that NI had completed the acquisition of Heinzinger Automotive GmbH, the electronic vehicle systems business ofRosenheim-based Heinzinger Electronic GmbH.[17]
After months of failed negotiations to purchase NI, industrial conglomerateEmerson Electric launched a hostile takeover bid in early 2023, appealing directly to shareholders.[18] In April 2023, NI agreed to be sold for $8.2 billion in an all-cash deal.[19][20] which was completed in October 2023. Within Emerson, NI now operates as the Test & Measurement business group, headquartered in Austin, Texas.[21]
NI's engineering software includes:
NI's hardware platforms include:
TheNational Instruments Electronics Workbench Group[27] is responsible for creating theelectronic circuit design softwareNI Multisim andNI Ultiboard,[28] which was previously aCanada-based company that first produced Multisim, and integrated Ultiboard with it.[citation needed]
Interactive Image Technologies was founded inToronto,Ontario, byJoe Koenig, and specializes in producing educational movies and documentaries. When thegovernment of Ontario needed an educational tool for teachingelectronics in colleges, the company created acircuit simulator called theElectronics Workbench. In 1996, Interactive Image Technologies appointed its vice president, Roy Bryant, as Chief Operating Officer to oversee the day-to-day operations of the company and to grow the company'selectronic design automation (EDA) products. Bryant is credited with "overseeing the development and marketing of the company's Electronics Workbench EDA product."[29] In 1998, the company started a strategic partnership with another electronic design automation company named Ultimate Technology fromNaarden,Netherlands, who was the European market leader inprinted circuit board design software, with their package Ultiboard. Like Electronics Workbench, founder James Post gained PR fame when he organized the distribution of 180,000 demo floppy disks via electronics magazines in Europe.[citation needed]
In 1999, the companies merged and renamed themselves after their most well-known product, Electronics Workbench. The product line then consisted ofschematic capture software, theMultisim simulation program, and theprinted circuit board design tool,Ultiboard.[citation needed]
In 2005, the company was acquired by NI and rebranded as National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group.[citation needed]
Beginning in 1995, NI has held an annual developer conference in Austin, NI Week. The week-long event was hosted at theAustin Convention Center, featuring presentations by NI employees and external speakers. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, while customers and university students present papers on their work with NI tools.[10]
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