Huntsville tech firm launches next chapter as Octave
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Octave listed on the Nasdaq late last month. Photo: Courtesy of Nasdaq, Inc./Vanja Savic
A Huntsville-based tech giant is entering a new era with a fresh brand identity and a Nasdaq listing.
Why it matters: Octave is the next chapter for a company with deep roots in Huntsville, a chapter that could see the company grow even more locally.
What they're saying: "The one-line answer would be focus," CEO Mattias Stenberg says about what the company's new independence means.
- "I tell people internally, we are at $1.6 billion now in revenue, and that's the smallest we will ever be," he tells Axios. "A year from now — I don't want to set a specific target — but [success] is to grow, and grow faster."
Zoom in: Octave makes software to help industrial and infrastructure companies build complex assets from design to construction, operation and maintenance.
- "Our uniqueness is really that we are ... connecting the software through these stages, and that's the whole value we provide," Stenberg says, offering the example of nuclear power plant construction.
Catch up quick: The company began as M&S Computing in Madison in 1969 and became Intergraph in 1980, under which banner it grew rapidly, reaching $1 billion in revenue in 1990 as one of the region's largest employers.
- It was purchased by Hexagon AB in 2010, and the decision to spin off into Octave came about two years ago, Stenberg says, a process that wrapped up with the Nasdaq listing May 28.
By the numbers: Octave has about 1,000 employees in Huntsville and 7,000 across 45 countries, doing $1.6 billion in annual revenue.
- Its customers include 60% of Fortune Global 500 companies, and Stenberg says the company aims for two-thirds of its growth to come from existing customers, of which it has 97% retention.
- Still, the company added 400 customers last year, he says.
What we're watching: The development is likely to mean growth locally, Stenberg says, adding that Huntsville's workforce pipeline is one of the reasons the company "decided to stay here and double down here over the years."
- And the rapidly changing landscape of AI will require more, not fewer, software engineers, he says.
- "AI is a great productivity tool for us to reduce work on things like bug fixing, documentation ... and things like that," he says. "But I am not planning to reduce head count because of that. I'm planning to take that money and put it on innovation instead."