Onyx International Inc.

Who owns Onyx International?
Onyx International is a privately held company. It was founded by Dan Yuting and a small founding team in Guangzhou in 2008, and it remains independent. The company has raised venture funding, including a 2016 Series A led by Rongjie Group and a Series B in 2025, but it is not publicly traded and is not owned by a larger corporation.

Is Onyx International publicly traded?
No. Onyx International is a private, non-listed joint stock company registered in Guangzhou, China. There is no stock ticker for the company, and its shares do not trade on any exchange.

When was Onyx International founded?
The company was founded on December 16, 2008, in Guangzhou, China, originally under the name Guangzhou Onyx Information Technology Co., Ltd. It adopted the name Onyx International Inc. in November 2025.

Who founded Onyx International?
Dan Yuting, a Xi'an Jiaotong University electronic engineering graduate with a background in display distribution and IT systems integration, co-founded the company with six core team members. She serves as chairwoman and general manager. Co-founder Zhu Zeng serves as CEO.

What products does Onyx International make?
The company makes E Ink devices under the BOOX brand: e-readers in 6 to 10 inch sizes, stylus-equipped e-note tablets such as the Note Air and Tab series, phone-form-factor readers like the Palma, and large E Ink monitors including the 25.3-inch Mira Pro. All run a customized version of Android.

Where are Onyx products sold?
BOOX devices are sold in more than 100 countries through the company's online store, regional distributors, and marketplaces including Amazon and AliExpress. The company exhibits at international trade shows such as IFA Berlin and maintains overseas sales operations outside China.

Onyx was founded on December 16, 2008, in Guangzhou as Guangzhou Onyx Information Technology Co., Ltd. The founding team, led by Dan Yuting, consisted of engineers and managers with backgrounds in electronics distribution and systems integration. Dan Yuting graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University in 1990 and had spent the previous two decades building businesses in computer displays and IT distribution before organizing a small e-reader research and development team around 2006.

The founding insight was straightforward. E Ink displays offered the readability of paper without the eye strain of backlit LCD screens, and the Amazon Kindle, launched in 2007, had demonstrated consumer demand. Rather than copy Amazon's closed ecosystem, Onyx chose to build devices on the open Android operating system, letting users install reading applications from any vendor.

The company released its first e-reader, the BOOX A60, in 2009. Early BOOX devices found buyers primarily in Europe and Russia, where demand existed for devices that could handle diverse document formats and non-Latin scripts. Support for PDF, EPUB, DJVU, and other formats made BOOX devices popular in academic and technical communities, where documents were rarely purchased through mainstream e-book stores.

Through the 2010s, Onyx expanded its product line steadily. The company added stylus-equipped e-note devices, beginning a product category it now calls BOOX tablets or ePaper tablets. In August 2016, Onyx completed a Series A financing round backed by Rongjie Group, providing capital for international expansion. Distribution agreements brought BOOX devices to more than 60 countries by the end of the decade, sold through a network of regional distributors and online channels.

The 2020s brought two significant shifts. First, Onyx adopted color E Ink technology, releasing devices built on E Ink's Kaleido and Gallery panels that could display thousands of colors, a feature Amazon did not offer on Kindle until later. Second, the company moved upmarket with the Note Air and Tab series, positioning BOOX as a productivity tool rather than a pure e-reader. The Tab Ultra and Note Air families added keyboards, cameras, and faster refresh modes, targeting users who wanted a paper-like alternative to an iPad.

In 2025, the company completed a Series B financing round valued in the hundreds of millions of yuan. In November 2025, the corporate entity formally changed its name from Guangzhou Onyx Information Technology Co., Ltd. to Onyx International Inc., reflecting a business that now derives most of its sales outside China. The BOOX lineup in 2026 includes the compact Go and Palma series, the mid-size Leaf and Page readers, the Note Air e-note family, and large Tab X devices, sold in more than 100 countries.

Onyx has faced persistent criticism in open-source software communities over its compliance with the GNU General Public License. BOOX devices run a modified Linux kernel and other GPL-licensed software, and developers have repeatedly alleged that the company does not publish complete corresponding source code as the license requires. The company has released partial source code packages on its website over the years, but community reviews have judged these releases incomplete. The issue has not produced litigation or regulatory action, but it remains a recurring topic in coverage of the company and a stated objection among some free software advocates when recommending devices.