Who Owns Xerox?

The Haloid Company was founded in Rochester, New York, in 1906 as a photographic paper manufacturer. In 1947 it licensed a dry-copying process called electrophotography, invented by patent attorney Chester Carlson in 1938, and spent more than a decade commercializing what became xerography.

The 914 copier, launched in 1959, was the first plain-paper photocopier and one of the most successful single products in American industrial history. Haloid renamed itself Xerox Corporation in 1961, revenue exploded from $37 million to over $500 million by decade's end, and "xerox" entered the language as a verb, a genericization the company has fought for sixty years.

The 1970s brought both triumph and failure. The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), opened in 1970, invented the graphical user interface, Ethernet, the laser printer, and the modern personal computer paradigm, technologies Xerox largely failed to commercialize while Apple and Microsoft built empires on the ideas. Japanese competitors Canon and Ricoh eroded copier margins through the 1980s.

The modern company took shape through services. The 2010 acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion moved Xerox into business process outsourcing; the services unit was spun off as Conduent in 2017, leaving Xerox focused on print and document technology. The 2019 holding-company reorganization created Xerox Holdings Corporation.

Recent years have been difficult. Print demand has declined structurally, revenue fell from $9 billion a decade ago, a 2024 goodwill impairment produced a $1.3 billion loss, and the dividend was suspended in 2024. The response was acquisition-led transformation: IT services firm ITsavvy for roughly $400 million in late 2024, then Lexmark in July 2025 for $1.5 billion including assumed debt, adding scale, an A4 color portfolio, Asia-Pacific presence, and manufacturing in Cebu, Philippines. Combined 2025 revenue reached $7.0 billion.