F5, Inc.

What does F5, Inc. do?

F5 sells application delivery and security products, including BIG-IP appliances and software, NGINX-based connectivity tools, and Distributed Cloud SaaS, that route, balance and protect application traffic for enterprises.

Who owns F5?

F5 is a public company listed on the Nasdaq under ticker FFIV. It is owned by institutional and public shareholders with no controlling parent, and it is a member of the S&P 500.

Is F5 the same as F5 Networks?

Yes. The company was founded as F5 Labs in 1996, renamed F5 Networks in 1999, and shortened to F5, Inc. in November 2021. The stock ticker FFIV is unchanged.

How much revenue does F5 make?

F5 reported $3.09 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025 ended September 30, 2025, with net income of $692 million.

Did F5 have a security breach?

F5 disclosed in October 2025 that a nation-state threat actor accessed internal systems and stole portions of BIG-IP source code and vulnerability data. The company issued emergency updates and worked with authorities on the response.

What is NGINX and does F5 own it?

NGINX is a widely used open source web server and reverse proxy. F5 acquired the company behind it in 2019 for $670 million and continues to maintain both the open source project and commercial NGINX products.

Jeff Hussey founded the company as F5 Labs in Seattle in February 1996, building a load balancer that distributed web traffic across server pools. Renamed F5 Networks in 1999, it went public on the Nasdaq that June just ahead of the dot-com peak, under ticker FFIV.

The BIG-IP product line became the industry's dominant application delivery controller through the 2000s, essentially standard equipment in large data centers. F5 added security modules, access management and DNS services, growing revenue past $2 billion while fending off rivals like Citrix NetScaler, Radware and A10.

The cloud transition hit the hardware-centric model in the mid-2010s. F5 responded with a string of acquisitions that rebuilt the portfolio: NGINX in 2019 for $670 million brought the world's most popular web server, Shape Security added bot defense in 2020, and Volterra in 2021 became the basis of F5 Distributed Cloud Services. The company formally changed its name to F5, Inc. in November 2021.

Locoh-Donou's strategy since has been software-first: growing recurring subscription and SaaS revenue while the systems business was refreshed. Fiscal 2025's 31 percent systems growth and continued software expansion validated the hybrid approach as AI-era traffic and security demands increased.

The acquisitions reshaped more than the product catalog. NGINX brought an open source developer community that hardware-era F5 had never cultivated, and the company has had to balance commercial interests against the goodwill of a project that powers much of the world's web traffic. So far it has maintained both, keeping NGINX open source while building a commercial product line around it.

F5 publishes corporate social responsibility reporting covering emissions targets, workforce metrics and STEM education philanthropy through the F5 Foundation and F5 Cares programs. Its Seattle headquarters operates as F5 Tower, a LEED-certified building.

F5 is a Fortune 1000 company, ranked 914 in the 2026 Fortune 500 adjacent listings. It holds leader and strong performer positions in analyst evaluations for web application firewalls and application delivery, and NGINX remains one of the most widely deployed pieces of open source infrastructure on the internet.

F5 disclosed a significant security incident in October 2025, when it reported that a nation-state actor had maintained long-term access to internal systems and exfiltrated portions of BIG-IP source code and vulnerability information. The disclosure prompted emergency patching guidance for customers and scrutiny of vendor security practices industry-wide. The company has also undergone periodic restructurings and layoffs as it shifts toward software.