Type Private Founded 1993 | Website www.kx.com Parent organization First Derivatives | |
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Headquarters Palo Alto, California, United States Key people Brian Conlon CEO
Charles Skelton CTO
Mark Sykes COO
Janet Lustgarten Chairwoman Founders Arthur Whitney, Janet Lustgarten | ||
Kx Systems is a data analytics vendor and the developer of the K programming language, the Q programming language, kdb, and kdb+, a column oriented database based on the K language. Both the language and the database are used in financial modeling and provide data analysis software to Wall Street investment banks, as well as energy, telecommunications, government and other industries.
The company was founded in 1993 by Janet Lustgarten and Arthur Whitney. Whitney is the developer of the K language. In 2014, First Derivatives increased their ownership interest to a 65 percent share of the privately held company as it began expanding its databases to retail, pharmaceuticals and utilities. Kx Systems is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and has had additional offices in New York City, Switzerland, Germany and Hong Kong.
Overview
In 1993, Whitney and Lustgarten joined together to commercialize the K programming platform Whitney had created after building the A+ language and other trading systems at Morgan Stanley. The purpose of the software was to access and explore large data volumes in financial services computer systems. Initially, Kx Systems had an exclusive contract with UBS to provide them with the K programming language. In 1998, the contract with UBS expired and the company launched the kdb database. As part of the database, Whitney developed a new language named Q that operates with K and allows the use of English words as functions.
In 1999, the company reached a marketing agreement with Northern Ireland based, First Derivatives. The agreement would eventually lead to First Derivatives owning a 65 percent share of the company. Kx Systems opened an office in Manhattan in 2002, offices in Germany and Japan in 2003, and an office in Hong Kong in 2009. In 2014, First Derivatives purchased a 65 percent share of the company and Kx Systems began offering its database to other data driven industries. The company has also partnered with the equity trading platform, IEX Group to carry out real-time market surveillance, which can be used for monitoring actions such as insider trading.