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National Instruments acquired by Emerson (2023)
- ChuckMcM 2y agoI must have missed this when it happened last year (April apparently). Perhaps not surprisingly I associate the name "Emerson" with comically large integrated stereos (boom boxes). But apparently they are building up a test and measurement group.
- quickthrowman 2y agoEmerson Electric (in TFA) does not make consumer electronics, that’s another company called Emerson Radio Corporation.
- ChuckMcM 2y agoI am aware, and it is unfortunate for Emerson Electric in terms of branding things in the electronics space. I don't doubt they will retain the National Instruments and/or Digilent brands for that reason. It will make me chuckle every time I see that Digilent banner "An Emerson company."
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- osigurdson 2y agoI'm a little surprised that a > 1 year article about an acquisition in a somewhat niche industry is front page Hacker News.
- guerrilla 2y agoThey seem pretty big, but maybe people are confusing them with to old famous National Semiconductor for some reason (sold to TI in 2011.)
- neltnerb 2y agoI suppose it's fair to describe both as niche, even though basically every facility that requires high reliability controls (talking chemicals, energy, medical, etc) uses Emerson. They're enormous, but they do focus on one kind of thing. It happens to also be what NI does (did) except NI did it in a way that was more accessible to education and hobbyists. Still expensive, but with things like educational toolkits using LabView as a base they have products that address the market for lower cost, lower reliability, but more flexible prototyping tools that I've never seen Emerson focus on at all. But yeah, I knew about this a year ago because it's the kind of thing that matters a lot for my work. And since then I've known to not build any new prototypes that use NI software and instead move towards anything else...
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago> And since then I've known to not build any new software that uses NI software[sic] and instead move towards anything else... Do you mean "not to build any new software that uses NI hardware", or are you specifically averse to Emerson's software dev practices even though you trust them to produce good hardware? On that note, who is your new preferred vendor for DAQ hardware? Some of the stuff that NI allowed you to build with cRIO or PC-based multifunction DAQ hardware like their PCIe-6321 etc. was pretty unique. There's not a lot of off-the-shelf gear for on the order of $1000 that can do 100 kHz digital/analog signal acquisition. I like Delta Tau PMAC gear for electronic servo control (though their recent acquisition by Omron seems to be having a similar impact as I expect Emerson is having at NI) and Delta Motion for hydraulics (not yet bought out by anyone, they seem to successfully transition to employee-owned after Natchwey retired last year, but time will tell)... but neither is a true multifunction DAQ system like NI.
- applied_heat 2y agoNothing like asking a question on a forum and Natchwey answering with 3 pages of mathcad solving 7th order motion equations
- TheJoeMan 2y agoAt my company we’ve had success with Advantech (Japanese) DAQs. I always considered NI best for research labs / benchtop measurements, and this acquisition seems like a poor fit because NI was pricy but with good end user support, while Emerson likes to have very expensive/little support.
- kragen 2y agoi'm not sure electronic test equipment is really that niche here
- bobmcnamara 2y agoIt's becoming clear it's the end of a language.
- bad_username 2y agoI spent a minute in a state of mild shock, thinking it's Native Instruments that got acquired...
- RIMR 2y agoThat would be a ridiculous acquisition. The shock was justified.
- sixthDot 2y agowell, remember that Sonic Foundry was acquired by Sony.
- svaha1728 2y agoThey were bought by a private equity company in 2021. Would love to know more about the Berlin programming scene in the 90s. The initial minds behind Generator/Reaktor were incredibly inspiring.
- etimberg 2y agoNot surprising. I worked at NI for my first job out of university and developing software there was so painful
- CoastalCoder 2y agoSounds interesting. Can you elaborate?
- Kirby64 2y agoNI has a nickname in the industry: NI = No Income. Keep in mind, they're also HQ'd in Austin, TX, which is essentially the most expensive city in Texas.
- etrautmann 2y agoInteresting, I’ve ended up spending thousands on NI hardware at my last four jobs
- Kirby64 2y agoThe cost of their hardware and software is unrelated to the salaries they pay their employees.
- Rinzler89 2y agoThat goes for every business. Their purpose is to increase shareholder value, not employee wages. The last part only happens due to market dynamics forcing them to, but they'd gladly pay engineers minimum wage if they could.
- positr0n 2y agoA lot of their products are relatively far into the long tail of hardware projects. Enough demand in the market that it makes sense for a company to design and build them, but not so many units sold that all those design costs are easily amortized away.
- Lammy 2y agoInteresting to see a two-character dot-com domain. Updated Date: 2023-08-25T05:22:08Z Creation Date: 1994-05-20T04:00:00Z Registry Expiry Date: 2024-09-29T13:53:33Z
- TacticalCoder 2y ago> Interesting to see a two-character dot-com domain. Indeed. There's also this one letter dot-com with 500 million MAU: x.com.
- immibis 2y agoirrelevant and known to lie about MAU anyway
- RachelF 2y agoNI used to be big and well known to the electronic engineers in the 1980's and 90's who helped develop the early Internet. See ti.com - Texas Instruments
- commandersaki 2y agoIf I was a company I'd be registering the domain 10 years in advance.
- azhenley 2y agoThe acquisition was in 2023.
- rossant 2y ago(2023)
- koshinae 2y agoOh, my... I've spent there 8 years. I wonder what took so long to rekt themselves into an acquisition after Dr. T retired.
- tapatio 2y agoI loved their hardware, we used it to create a DAQ for rocket engines. It was a lot of fun, but also paid peanuts.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- andrewshadura 2y agoBut what about Lake and Palmer?
- sixthDot 2y agoThey stay in the hole of the black snake.