Avid Technology, Inc.

What does Avid Technology own?
Avid owns the Pro Tools audio platform, Media Composer video editing, Sibelius notation, and associated hardware and media infrastructure products including Avid NEXIS, MediaCentral, and VENUE.

Is Avid Technology publicly traded?
No. Avid traded on NASDAQ under AVID until November 2023, when STG completed its approximately $1.4 billion take-private acquisition at $27.05 per share.

Who founded Avid Technology?
Bill Warner founded Avid in 1987 in Burlington, Massachusetts, building the first practical nonlinear digital video editing system, the Avid/1 Media Composer.

Where is Avid Technology headquartered?
Avid is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with development and sales offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

How many brands does Avid Technology own?
Its principal product brands are Pro Tools, Media Composer, Sibelius, MediaCentral, Avid NEXIS, VENUE, and Maestro graphics, plus associated hardware lines.

Who owns Avid Technology?
Private equity firm Symphony Technology Group, through an affiliated acquisition entity, has owned Avid since November 2023.

Bill Warner founded Avid in 1987 in Burlington, Massachusetts, after developing a digital video editing prototype. The Avid/1 Media Composer, launched in 1989, digitized nonlinear editing and replaced flatbed film editing for an industry within a decade. By the mid-1990s, the majority of major feature films were cut on Avid systems.

Avid went public in 1993 and used its shares to assemble a media production portfolio. The defining acquisition came in 1995, when Avid merged with Digidesign, maker of Pro Tools, in a deal that brought the dominant professional audio platform under the same roof as Media Composer. Later additions included Sibelius music notation in 2006 and a series of broadcast graphics and asset-management businesses.

The 2010s were harder. Avid faced accounting restatements, executive turnover, and the erosion of its hardware business as commodity computing power caught up. CEO Jeff Rosica, appointed in 2018, pushed the portfolio toward subscriptions and recurring revenue.

In August 2023, Avid agreed to be acquired by STG for $27.05 per share in cash, valuing the company at approximately $1.4 billion. The deal closed November 7, 2023, ending thirty years as a public company. Wellford Dillard succeeded Rosica as CEO in April 2024. As a private company, Avid has continued consolidating products into subscription offerings and trimmed headcount from roughly 2,100 in 2023 to about 1,600 by mid-2026.

Avid's most significant corporate controversy was an accounting scandal in the early 2010s, when the company restated years of financial results, delisted temporarily from NASDAQ in 2014, and replaced its executive team. The restatement resolved without fraud charges, but it cost the company years of investor credibility.

Post-buyout criticism has centered on subscription pricing. Long-standing Pro Tools customers objected to Avid ending perpetual license sales for new customers and moving support renewals into subscription structures, a common but unpopular private-equity-era playbook in software.