Who Owns Avnet?

Charles Avnet founded the business in 1921 on Radio Row in New York City, buying and selling surplus radio components as commercial broadcasting emerged. The company rode successive technology waves: wartime radio supply, the television boom of the 1950s, and the transistor and semiconductor revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The company incorporated as Avnet Electronics Corporation in 1955 and went public in 1959. It experimented with diversification, including a period owning Guild Guitar Company, before consolidating around electronic distribution and moving its headquarters to Phoenix, Arizona, in the late 1980s.

Through the 1990s and 2000s Avnet consolidated the fragmented global distribution industry through dozens of acquisitions, becoming one of the two dominant distributors worldwide alongside Arrow Electronics. The brand added a design and engineering services layer in the 2000s and 2010s, moving from pure component reselling into embedded systems, IoT, and integration services.

Today the Avnet brand is the company's volume engine, serving manufacturers across automotive, industrial, defense, communications, and consumer electronics. Its FY2025 performance reflected the semiconductor cycle: sales fell to $22.2 billion as customers digested inventory, with recovery emerging from Asia by year-end.