National Instruments
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Website | ni | |
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Footnotes / references [1] |
National Instruments Corporation,
In 2022, the company sold products to more than 35,000 companies with revenues of US$1.66 billion.[1]
History
Founding
In the early 1970s,
With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group bought a
1980s
At the end of the 1970s, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit. In 1980, Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin quit their jobs to devote themselves full-time to National Instruments, and at the end of the year, 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.[5]
In 1983, National Instruments developed their first
The company had 100 employees by 1986.
1990s
After growing their staff enough to take over almost the entire building they were renting, in 1990, NI moved to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway, which the company purchased in 1991. The building, located along Lake Austin near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills = Bridge Point."[6]
NI received their first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later in the 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 for
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.[7] The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, was designed to be employee-friendly. It 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. "Dr. T", as the employees call their CEO, sits in an open cubicle and does not have an assigned parking space.[6] 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 is now listed on the Nasdaq exchange as NATI.
By the late 1990s, the more advanced DAQ boards were provided by the company, which could replace vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system.
2000s
User traffic and e-commerce rapidly improved after the company acquired the ni.com domain and began investing in web technologies. They introduced 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.[7]
In the 2000s, NI began exporting most of its manufacturing overseas by opening its 144,000-square-foot (13,400 m2) manufacturing plant in Debrecen, Hungary. NI now manufactures nearly 90% of its production in Debrecen and has expanded several times in the last decade. In 2011, with a multimillion-dollar grant from the government, NI increased production in Debrecen by approximately 20%. With state-of-the-art automation processes, headcount increased by only 2%.[8] 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. Upon completion of this building, the NI campus finally had enough capacity to move all Austin-based employees to a single location.[7]
Following the company model of selling directly to customers, by 2006, NI had opened 21 sales offices in Europe and 12 offices in the Asia/Pacific region, as well as a multitude of offices in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.[7] Research and Development centers are located in the United States, Germany, India, Romania, China, Canada, and Malaysia.
2010s
In January 2013, National Instruments acquired all outstanding shares of Digilent Inc., which became a wholly owned subsidiary.[9] 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.[10] Digilent developed the open standard Pmod Interface.
2020s
On June 16, 2020, National Instruments announced that they were officially changing the company's name to "NI".[11] On May 4, 2021, NI announced the acquisition of monoDrive, a provider of simulation software for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle development.[12] In March 2022, it was announced that NI had completed the acquisition of Heinzinger Automotive GmbH, the electronic vehicle systems business of Rosenheim-based Heinzinger Electronic GmbH.[13]
After months of failed negotiations to purchase NI, industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric announced a hostile takeover bid for NI in an appeal directly to shareholders in early 2023.[14] In April 2023, NI agreed to be sold for $8.2 billion in an all-cash deal.[15][16] which was completed in October 2023. Within Emerson, NI now operate as a new Test & Measurement business group, headquartered in Austin, Texas.[17]
Products
National Instruments' engineering software includes:
- LabVIEW, a graphical development environment
- LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite, A design environment designed for rapid deployment of communication systems.
- LabWindows/CVI, an ANSI C programming environment
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- NI TestStand, for test execution sequencing
- NI VeriStand for real-time test
- NI DIAdem for data management
- NI Multisim for circuit design
- NI Ultiboard for PCB design
- NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection
- NI LabVIEW SignalExpress for data logging
- NI Switch Executive for switch management
- NI Requirements Gateway for requirements tracking
National Instruments' hardware platforms include:
- NI industrial controller[18]
- NI roboRIO, a robotics controller used standard in the FIRST Robotics Competition
- NI CompactDAQ, data acquisition systems for USB and Ethernet[19]
- PXI and PXIe Platforms, a modular instrumentation standard with more than 1,500 products[20]
- STS, a production-ready ATE solution for RF, mixed-signal, and MEMS[21]
- NI ELVIS, a multi-instrument lab station for teaching technology[22]
Groups
Electronics Workbench Group
The National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group-based company that first produced MultiSIM, and integrated ULTIboard with it.
Interactive Image Technologies was founded in
In 1999, the companies merged and renamed themselves after their most well known product, the Electronics Workbench. Then the product line consisted of
In 2005, the company was acquired by National Instruments and rebranded as National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group.
Community
Beginning in 1995, National Instruments has held an annual developer conference in Austin, NIWeek. The week-long conference was held at the Austin Convention Center. Activities there were presented both by NI employees and external presenters. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, and various customers or university students also present papers on their work with NI tools.[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b "National Instruments 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". SEC.gov. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 21 February 2023.
- ^ "The Origins of NI - Online News - National Instruments". www.ni.com. Archived from the original on 2015-09-28. Retrieved 2015-09-27.
- ^ Seegmiller, Neal (2006). "James Truchard and National Instruments: Engineering a Successful Company" (PDF). University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-20. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ a b Schneiderman, Rob (October 21, 2002). "James Truchard and Jeff Kodosky: Turning PCs into Virtual Instruments". Electronics Design. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ a b c d "Three Entrepreneurs Seed a Revolution". National Instruments. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-07-15. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Building a Global Community". National Instruments. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-07-15. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Measurement and Automation - Transforming the World Around Us". National Instruments. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-07-15. Retrieved 2007-03-02.
- ^ National Instruments celebrates ten years in HungaryArchived October 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "National Instruments acquires Digilent Inc". dangerousprototypes.com. Dangerous Prototypes self-published blog. 24 January 2013. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ Maxfield, Max (6 February 2020). "Big Things in Store for Digilent in 2020". embedded-computing.com. OpenSystems Media. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ "A letter from Eric Starkloff". National Instruments. June 16, 2020. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021.
- ^ "NI Acquires monoDrive to Strengthen its ADAS Simulation Offerings". everythingRF.
- ^ "Evertiq - NI completes acquisition of Heinzinger Automotive GmbH". evertiq.com. Retrieved 2022-03-14.
- ^ Samaha, Lee (21 Jan 2023). "Emerson Electric Makes an Aggressive Takeover Bid for National Instruments: What You Need to Know". The Motley Fool.
- ^ Gomes, Nathan (12 April 2023). "Emerson Electric to buy NI for $8.2 bln to deepen automation push". Reuters.
- ^ Merrilees, Annika (12 April 2023). "Emerson succeeds in hostile bid, reaches $8.2 billion deal to buy National Instruments". St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
- ^ Rubbelke, Nathan (11 Oct 2023). "Emerson closes $8.2B deal to acquire National Instruments". St. Louis Business Journal.
- ^ CompactRIO, National Instruments
- ^ CompactDAQ, National Instruments
- ^ PXI Platform, National Instruments
- ^ What Is the Semiconductor Test System (STS)?, National Instruments
- ^ NI ELVIS III, National Instruments
- ^ NI EWG rebranding, National Instruments
- ^ NI Multisim - Overview, National Instruments website
- ^ "Roy Bryant Appointed COO of Interactive Image Technologies". EE Times. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
External links
- Official website
- Historical business data for National Instruments Corporation:
- SEC filings