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| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1981 |
| Headquarters | Wilsonville, Oregon, United States 45°19′10″N 122°45′46″W / 45.31944°N 122.76278°WCoordinates: 45°19′10″N 122°45′46″W / 45.31944°N 122.76278°W |
| Industry | EDA, Embedded Software |
| Products | Nucleus OS, EDGE Developer Suite |
| Revenue | ▲$880 million USD (2007)[1] |
| Net income | ▲$29 million USD (2007)[1] |
| Employees | 4,358 (2008)[1] |
| Website | mentor.com |
Mentor Graphics, Inc (NASDAQ: MENT) is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation (EDA) for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create. The company, founded in 1981, is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, and employs 4,000 people worldwide.
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In 1981, the idea of computer-aided design for electronics as the foundation of a company occurred to several groups - those who founded Mentor, Valid Logic Systems, and Daisy Systems. One of the main distinctions between these groups was that the founding engineers of Mentor, whose backgrounds were in software development at Tektronix, ruled out designing and manufacturing proprietary computers to run their software applications. They felt that hardware was going to become a commodity owned by big computer companies, so instead they would select an existing computer system as the hardware platform for the Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) programs they would build.
By February 1981, most of the start-up team had been identified; by March, the three executive founders, Tom Bruggere, Gerry Langeler and Dave Moffenbeier had left Tektronix, and by May the business plan was complete. The first round of money, $1 million, came from Sutter Hill, Greylock, and Venrock Associates. The next round was $2 million from five venture capital firms, and in April 1983 a third round raised $7 million more. Mentor Graphics was one of the first companies to attract venture capital to Oregon.
Apollo Computer workstations were chosen as the initial hardware platform. Based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Apollo was less than a year old and had only announced itself to the public a few weeks before the founders of Mentor Graphics began their initial meetings.
When Mentor entered the CAE market the company had two technical differentiators. The first was the software - Mentor, Valid, and Daisy each had software with different strengths and weaknesses. The second was the hardware - Mentor ran all programs on the Apollo workstation, while Daisy and Valid each built their own hardware for schematic capture, but ran simulation and other programs on larger computers such as the MicroVAX.
After a frenzied development, the IDEA 1000 product was introduced at the 1982 Design Automation Conference, though in a suite and not on the floor.[2]
By the time founder Bruggere ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, the company had grown to annual revenues of $384 million.[3]
Mentor Graphics is a global company with product development being done in the USA, Europe, Japan, Pakistan, India and Egypt. In keeping with global trends in software development, the company has a substantial labor force in lower cost locations such as Pakistan, India, Poland, Hungary and Egypt. James "Jim" Ready, one of the more colorful people in embedded systems, left Mentor in 1999 to form the embedded Linux company MontaVista. Neil Henderson, a pioneer in the royalty-free, source provided market space, joined Mentor Graphics in 2002 with the acquisition of Accelerated Technology Inc. Stephen Mellor, a leader in the UML space and co-originator of the Shlaer-Mellor design methodology, joined Mentor Graphics in 2004 with the acquisition of Project Technology.
As of 2007, Mentor's major competitors are Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys and Magma Design Automation.
In June 2008, Cadence Design Systems offered to acquire Mentor Graphics in a leveraged buyout. On 15 August 2008, Cadence withdrew this offer quoting an inability to raise the necessary capital and the unwillingness of Mentor Graphics' Board and management to discuss the offer.[4] In August 2009, Mentor completed the acquisition of silicon manufacturing testing company LogicVision for $13 million in an all stock deal.[5]
As of August 2007, Walden C. Rhines is the company's chairman of the board and chief executive officer. He started as CEO in October 1993. Gregory K. Hinckley serves as the president of the corporation and has been a corporate officer since January 1997. The chief financial officer is Maria M. Pope, who has been in that role since 2 May 2007.
The company distributes the following tools.
On March 18,2010, Mentor Graphics, Inc announced completion of the acquisition of Valor Computerized Systems, Ltd. for net consideration valued at about $50 million. Mentor paid approximately 5.6 million shares of Mentor stock and $32.5 million in cash. Immediately prior to closing, Valor had cash of approximately $29 million. Valor's revenues for its last reported full year ending December 31, 2008 were approximately $40 million. [6]
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   | Mentor Graphics website - The EDA Technology Leader - Mentor Graphics |
| | Mentor Graphics Corp - MENT - Mentor Graphics Corporation - Google Finance |
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