Keysight Technologies — Business Overview

What does Keysight do?

Keysight Technologies is a test and measurement company that helps engineers design, validate, and manufacture electronic products. Founded in the heart of Silicon Valley with over 80 years of history (tracing back through Agilent to Hewlett-Packard), Keysight sells hardware instruments, software, and services to roughly 40,000 customers per year across industries like telecommunications, aerospace and defense, automotive, semiconductors, and general electronics. Its products let customers simulate, test, and verify whether their electronic designs actually work before going to market.

Keysight operates through two reporting segments:

Keysight generated $5.4 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2025 (ended October 31, 2025), up from $5.0 billion in 2024. The company spent $1.0 billion on R&D in 2025, signaling a heavy investment focus on staying at the leading edge of measurement technology.

How does Keysight make money?

Keysight earns revenue through three interconnected streams: hardware instruments, software licenses, and services. Hardware (oscilloscopes, signal analyzers, network analyzers, power supplies, and many others) has historically been the core of the business. Software products — including instrument-specific applications, workflow automation tools, and standalone design simulation packages — are a growing piece of the pie, and Keysight is deliberately pushing to expand software's share because it tends to carry higher margins and generate recurring subscription revenue. Services (calibration, repair, technical support branded as KeysightCare, and professional services) round out the offering and benefit from the company's large global installed base of instruments.

A key strategic priority is growing recurring revenue. Software subscriptions and multi-year service contracts provide more predictable cash flows than one-time hardware sales. The company has a dedicated enterprise software sales force and recently expanded its software portfolio through acquisitions including ESI Group (computer-aided engineering), the Optical Solutions Group from Synopsys, and PowerArtist from Ansys — all completed in fiscal 2025. The October 2025 acquisition of Spirent Communications also adds subscription-based network testing and assurance software to the mix.

What market does Keysight operate in?

Keysight competes in the global electronic test and measurement (T&M) market, which is driven by the relentless pace of technological change in electronics. Every time a new communications standard (5G, 6G, 800Gb/s Ethernet), chip architecture, or vehicle platform is developed, engineers need new tools to design and verify it. The filing cites "accelerating pace of technological innovation and engineering intensity" as long-term secular drivers of demand — meaning these are structural tailwinds, not cyclical bumps.

Several large technology waves are actively expanding Keysight's addressable market. These include the global rollout of 5G (and early work on 6G), the explosion of AI infrastructure requiring new high-speed data center interconnects, the electrification and automation of vehicles, and continued semiconductor advancement. For example, Keysight explicitly highlights its role in helping customers build out AI compute clusters and next-generation interconnects like 1.6Tb/s Ethernet.

Who are Keysight's main competitors?

The T&M industry is competitive but Keysight claims a unique position as the only company with comparable breadth across both markets and product categories. The filing states plainly that "none of our competitors offer the equivalent range of products and services at the scale we do or serve all the same markets in the aggregate." Competitors tend to be either large conglomerates with a T&M division or more specialized regional players. Named competitors are not listed in Item 1, but well-known rivals in this space include National Instruments (now part of Emerson), Rohde & Schwarz, Tektronix (Fortive), and Anritsu.

Keysight's stated competitive advantages cluster around three things: (1) deep, long-standing customer relationships built over 80+ years, which makes switching costly for customers with large installed bases; (2) proprietary technology, including an in-house semiconductor fabrication facility that produces microwave integrated circuits and other components not commercially available elsewhere; and (3) a "first-to-market" solutions approach where Keysight works directly with the engineers defining new technology standards, ensuring its tools are ready when customers need them.

Where does Keysight operate?

Keysight is a genuinely global business, selling to customers in over 100 countries. Of its approximately 16,800 employees as of October 31, 2025, about 5,800 are in the Americas (5,500 in the U.S.), 3,600 in Europe, and 7,400 in the Asia Pacific region — meaning more than 44% of its workforce is in Asia Pacific, reflecting both manufacturing scale and growing customer proximity.

Manufacturing is split between a central hub in Penang, Malaysia (final assembly and calibration of advanced instruments) and specialized facilities in the U.S. and Germany. The U.S. sites in Santa Rosa, California and Colorado Springs, Colorado handle proprietary, high-complexity technologies — microwave circuits, optical components, advanced packaging — that Keysight considers core to its competitive differentiation. Contract manufacturers handle lower-value assembly work.

The company has some geopolitical exposure worth noting. It permanently exited Russia after sanctions were imposed following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is also subject to U.S. export control regulations that restrict sales of certain technologies to specific countries, which can limit its ability to serve some markets. Given the significant Asia Pacific manufacturing footprint and customer base, developments in U.S.-China trade policy represent an ongoing area of regulatory monitoring, though the filing does not quantify China-specific revenue exposure directly.