NICE was founded in 1986 in Ra'anana, Israel, under the name Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering. The founding team included engineers Benny Levin, David Arzi, and Micky Golan, among others. The company's initial work focused on contact center technology and business intelligence applications for the Israeli market.
In the early 1990s, NICE's engineers developed a telephony voice recording system that became a foundational product for the contact center industry. The company also established a subsidiary called NICECom to develop ATM software. NICECom grew rapidly, and in 1994, NICE sold the subsidiary to 3Com for $54 million, providing capital for the parent company's expansion into international markets. On October 14, 1991, the company had been formally renamed NICE Systems Ltd., with the original acronym no longer in active use.
NICE went public on NASDAQ in 1996, establishing its presence in U.S. capital markets and signaling its ambition to compete globally. The IPO gave the company access to funding for the acquisition-driven growth strategy that would define the following two decades.
In 2007, NICE made its most significant acquisition to that point, purchasing Actimize for $280 million. Actimize was a provider of risk management and financial crime compliance software, and its acquisition gave NICE a second major business line alongside its contact center operations. Actimize has since grown into a leading platform for anti-money laundering, fraud detection, and trading compliance used by major financial institutions worldwide.
In 2011, NICE acquired UK-based Fizzback for approximately $80 million. Fizzback specialized in real-time customer feedback collection, processing approximately 150 million individual feedback reports at the time of acquisition, many drawn from social media platforms. In the same year, NICE acquired Merced Systems, a provider of performance management and workforce analytics software, for $150 million.
In 2014, CEO Zeevi Bregman departed and was replaced by Barak Eilam, who had previously served as the company's president. Eilam would lead NICE for a decade, overseeing its transformation from a primarily on-premise software vendor into a cloud-first enterprise platform company.
In 2015, NICE relocated its U.S. headquarters to a new 60,000 square foot office on the Hudson River waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey. That same year, the company sold its physical security business unit, NICE Security, to private equity firm Battery Ventures. The unit was subsequently rebranded as Qognify and later acquired by Hexagon AB in 2023.
On June 6, 2016, the company was formally renamed NICE Ltd. and completed its largest acquisition to date, purchasing inContact, a cloud-based contact center software provider, for approximately $960 million. The inContact acquisition was transformational, giving NICE a fully cloud-native contact center platform and accelerating its shift away from on-premise deployments. Paul Jarman of inContact continued as CEO of the inContact division following the integration.
In 2018, NICE acquired Mattersight Corporation, a behavioral analytics software company, for approximately $90 million, representing a 25% premium over Mattersight's share price. The acquisition added behavioral analytics capabilities to NICE's workforce optimization portfolio.
In May 2019, NICE acquired Brand Embassy, a digital customer service platform. In April 2021, NICE announced the acquisition of MindTouch, a San Diego-based knowledge management company founded in 2005, subsequently rebranding the platform as CXone Expert. By 2021, NICE had reached a valuation of $17 billion, making it the most valuable company in Israel at that time.
In June 2024, NICE announced that CEO Barak Eilam would step down at the end of the year. Eilam remained in a strategic consulting role through the first half of 2025. Former SAP executive Scott Russell was named as his replacement, taking the CEO role effective January 1, 2025.
For fiscal year 2024, NICE reported total revenue of $2.735 billion, up 15% year over year, with cloud revenue of $2 billion representing 25% growth. Net income for the year was $442.6 million, and operating income was $546 million, representing a 20% operating margin.