Profile

Ansys, Inc. is a global public company based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. It develops and markets multiphysics engineering simulation software for product design, testing and operation. Ansys was founded in 1970 by John Swanson. Swanson sold his interest in the company to venture capitalists in 1993. Ansys went public on NASDAQ in 1996. In the 2000s, Ansys made numerous acquisitions of other engineering design companies, acquiring additional technology for fluid dynamics, electronics design, and other physics analysis. Ansys became a component of the NASDAQ-100 index on December 23, 2019. The idea for Ansys was first conceived by John Swanson while working at the Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory in the 1960s. At the time, engineers performed finite element analysis by hand. Westinghouse rejected Swanson's idea to automate FEA by developing general purpose engineering software, so Swanson left the company in 1969 to develop the software on his own. He founded Ansys under the name Swanson Analysis Systems Inc. the next year, working out of his farmhouse in Pittsburgh.