Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A), or Agilent, is a global company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation. Agilent Technologies has a stock market capitalization of over 15 billion USD and the company's headquarters are in Santa Clara, California, in the Silicon Valley region.
 

Many of Agilent's predecessor product lines were developed by Hewlett-Packard, the American computing company founded in 1939. In 1999, the product lines not directly connected with computers, storage, and imaging were grouped into a separate company (Agilent), the stock of which was offered to the public in an initial public offering. The Agilent IPO may have been the largest in the history of Silicon Valley[7] at the time.
 

The company thus created in 1999 was an $8 billion company with about 47,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instruments, semiconductors, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecom and wireless R&D and production.
 

History

 

 

2001-2010

In 2001, Agilent Technologies sold its health care and medical products organization to Philips Medical Systems. HP Medical Products had been the second oldest part of Hewlett-Packard, acquired in the 1950s. Only the original founding test and measurement organization was older.
 

In August 2005, Agilent Technologies announced the sale of its Semiconductor Products Group, which produced light-emitting diode, radio frequency and mixed-signal integrated circuits, to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and Silver Lake Partners. The group operated as a privately run company, Avago Technologies, until August 2009, when it was brought public in an IPO. It continues to operate under the same name as a publicly traded corporation. Agilent also sold its 47% stake in the light-emitting diode manufacturer Lumileds to Philips Electronics for just under $1 billion. Lumileds originally started as Hewlett-Packard's optoelectronics division.
 

Also in August 2005, Agilent announced a plan to divest its semiconductor test solutions business, composed of both the system-on-chip and memory test market areas. Agilent listed the new company as Verigy, mid-2006 on NASDAQ. Also in 2006, Agilent partnered with Core Wafer Systems, Inc. to sell ASUR Single Device Reliability which broke new ground with advanced testing capabilities.
 

In 2009 Agilent announced the closure of a subsection of its Test & Measurement division. The product lines affected included the automated optical inspection, solder paste inspection, and automated X-ray products [5DX]. In 2004 Agilent reported that it had captured 19% of the US$244 million (excluding Japan) global imaging inspection market. On July 27, 2009 Agilent announced they would buy Varian, Inc., for US$1.5 billion. In November 2009, Agilent sold the N2X product line to IXIA. In February, 2010 Agilent announced the selling of its Network Solutions Division to JDSU for US$162 million.

 

2011

In 2011, the company along with the University of California, Davis, announced that it would be establishing the Davis Millimeter Wave Research Center.
 

Agilent announced it would increase its life sciences engagement through the acquisition of Halo Genomics, based in Uppsala, Sweden, which was involved in next-generation sequencing technology development.

 

2012

On 17 May 2012, Agilent Technologies agreed to buy Dako, a Danish cancer diagnostics company, for $2.2 Billion, to expand its presence in life sciences industry.