SAS Institute
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | July 1, 1976 |
| Founder | Anthony James Barr James Goodnight John Sall Jane Helwig |
| Headquarters | Cary, North Carolina, U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | James Goodnight, CEO and Co-founder John Sall, Co-founder and Executive Vice President |
| Products | SAS (software) SAS language JMP |
| Revenue | US$ 3.2 billion (2021) |
Number of employees | 12,170 (2022) |
| Website | www |
SAS Institute (or SAS, pronounced "sass") is an American multinational developer of analytics software based in Cary, North Carolina. SAS develops and markets a suite of analytics software (also called SAS), which helps access, manage, analyze and report on data to aid in decision-making. The company's software is used by most of the Fortune 500.
SAS Institute started as a project at North Carolina State University to create a statistical analysis system (hence the proper name, Statistical Analysis System) that was originally used primarily by agricultural departments at universities in the late 1960s. It became an independent, private business led by current CEO James Goodnight and three other project leaders from the university in 1976. SAS grew from $10 million in revenues in 1980 to $1.1 billion by 2000. In 1998 a larger proportion of these revenues were spent on research and development than at most other software companies; in 1997 these were more than double the industry average.