The story
Wind River Systems was formed by a partnership of Jerry Fiddler and Dave Wilner. Until 1981, Fiddler had worked at Berkeley Lab writing software for control systems, and wanted to pursue a career in computer generated music, which he funded through a consultancy business focused on real-time operating systems. His early clients included the National Football League and film director Francis Ford Coppola, for whom he designed a unique film editing system. Wilner, a former colleague at Berkeley Lab, joined Fiddler to form Wind River Systems in 1983.
In 2009, Wind River was acquired by Intel. In 2018, Intel spun out its Wind River division, which was then acquired by TPG Capital. On January 11, 2022, Wind River announced that it was acquired by Aptiv, an auto parts company, for $4.3 billion in cash.
The company's key milestones include:
1983: Wind River is incorporated in 1983 with each partner contributing $3,000 and a desk to the business. The company was named for Wind River, Wyoming, where Fiddler had vacationed that year.
1987: Wind River introduces VxWorks, a leading real-time operating system for embedded devices.
1995: VxWorks launches into space on the NASA Clementine moon probe. Also, the Tornado integrated development environment is launched and wins EDN's Embedded Development Software Innovation of the Year award as the first graphically oriented development environment for embedded
1997: VxWorks, the real-time operating system for NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission, lands on Mars
1999: Acquisition of one of its major competitors, Integrated Systems Inc., makers of pSOS. Wind River has since discontinued the pSOS product line and has recommended existing pSOS customers move to VxWorks.
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2001: Wind River Systems acquired Belgian software company Eonic Systems, the developer of Virtuoso RTOS for DSPs. In November 2015, Wind River Systems renamed the operating system to Rocket, made it open-source and royalty-free. In 2016, Rocket was incorporated into Zephyr RTOS hosted by Linux Foundation.
2004: Wind River officially enters the embedded Linux market, with a Carrier Grade Linux platform targeting the networking & communications infrastructure industry. Also, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, powered by VxWorks, land on Mars. Wind River helped in manufacturing the IntelliStar for The Weather Channel. The IntelliStar is used at Cable Headends to insert Local Weather into The Weather Channel's national programming.
2007: Wind River joins Google's Open Handset Alliance as an original Linux commercialization partner.
2008: Wind River establishes the embedded Linux market share lead with greater than 30 percent of total market revenue, four years after entering the market.
2009: Intel acquires Wind River for approximately $884 million and it becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. Wind River launches a commercial Android software platform. Wind River becomes a founding member of the GENIVI Alliance, now called COVESA (Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance).
2010: Wind River adds Simics, a full system simulator, to its product portfolio. VxWorks becomes the first RTOS to be certified under Wurldtech's Achilles certification program, a standard for industrial cyber security. Wind River partners with Intel and the Linux Foundation to create the Yocto Project, an open source collaboration project providing templates, tools and methods to help developers create embedded Linux-based systems.
2012: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully lands Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, powered by Wind River technology. Wind River debuts software platform targeted at gateways and hubs for the Internet of things.
2013: Wind River becomes part of Intel's Internet of Things Group (IOTG), but remains a wholly owned subsidiary. Barry Mainz assumes the position of President.
2014: Wind River introduces its software for network functions virtualization (NFV) applications, as well as its next-generation VxWorks platform reinvented for the Internet of Things.
2014: Wind River fined $750,000 by Bureau of Industry and Security for exporting encryption technology to countries including Israel and South Korea.
2015: the company was accused of repeated trademark and licensing violations of the Grsecurity project, which as response has restricted its code to commercial partners only.
2016: Intel announced that it intended to fully integrate Wind River into one of its divisions (thus ending Wind River's status as a wholly owned subsidiary,) although the scheduled completion date of this action has not been made public. Barry Mainz left the company to become president and CEO of MobileIron and Jim Douglas assumes the position of President.
2018: Intel divested Wind River Systems to alternative asset fund manager TPG under undisclosed terms.
2018: Ford selects Wind River Over-the-Air Update Technology.
2018: NASA's InSight lands on Mars with VxWorks operating system.
2019: Wind River became the first OpenChain 2.0 conformant organization.
2020: Kevin Dallas named as CEO and member of the board of directors.
2020: Verizon uses Wind River's software infrastructure for its deployment of virtualized 5G RAN.
2020: Wind River becomes first and only to achieve The Open Group FACE Conformance for Linux.
2021: Perseverance Mars becomes fourth Mars rover running VxWorks operating system.
2021: Vodafone selects Wind River as a partner to build Europe's first commercial open RAN network.
2022: Wind River was acquired by Aptiv from TPG Capital for $4.3 billion in cash.
2024: Wind River Chief Product Officer Avijit Sinha named as president.
From Wikipedia’s article on Wind River Systems, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4