Leidos Holdings, Inc.

Is Leidos the same company as SAIC?
They are siblings, not the same company. Leidos was created in 2013 when Science Applications International Corporation split; SAIC kept the name and IT services while the national security and health businesses became Leidos.

What does the name Leidos mean?
It is a fragment of "kaleidoscope," chosen at the 2013 separation. It has no other meaning.

Is Leidos publicly traded?
Yes. Leidos Holdings trades on the NYSE under ticker LDOS and is a Fortune 500 member.

How big is Leidos?
Approximately 48,000 employees and about $18 billion in guided 2026 revenue, making it the largest or near-largest pure federal services contractor depending on the measure.

Who is the CEO of Leidos?
Tom Bell has been Chairman and CEO since May 2023, succeeding Roger Krone. He previously led Rolls-Royce Defense.

The corporate roots run to 1969, when nuclear physicist J. Robert Beyster left General Atomics and founded Science Applications International Corporation in La Jolla, California. SAIC grew from a two-person consultancy into one of the largest employee-owned companies in America, pioneering scientific and technical work for defense and intelligence agencies, and went public in 2006.

By the early 2010s the company had become unwieldy, mixing high-margin national security work with lower-margin commercial and IT services. In September 2013, SAIC split in two: the IT services business retained the SAIC name and the national security, health, and engineering portfolio took the name Leidos, led initially by former Air Force General John Jumper and then by Roger Krone from 2014.

The decisive deal came in August 2016: Leidos merged with Lockheed Martin's Information Systems and Global Solutions business in a $5 billion Reverse Morris Trust transaction. Lockheed shareholders received the spun entity tax-free, it merged into Leidos, and the combined company overnight became a roughly $10 billion enterprise with leading positions in defense IT, air traffic management, and health services.

Tom Bell, a former Rolls-Royce Defense CEO and Boeing executive, became CEO in May 2023 and launched the NorthStar 2030 strategy emphasizing defense technology products alongside services. Portfolio moves followed: the 2020 purchases of Dynetics for $1.65 billion and L3Harris's security detection business for $1 billion, the 2025 acquisition of identity and security company Entrust for approximately $2.4 billion, and the October 2026 divestiture of the Security Enterprise Solutions screening business as the company refocused on software and defense tech.

As a top-tier federal contractor, Leidos faces routine False Claims Act and bid-protest exposure. Legacy matters inherited through the Lockheed transaction have largely resolved. No company-defining regulatory action is on record as of November 2026; the Abu Ghraib verdict that implicated peer CACI did not involve Leidos.