KX Systems

KX is a privately owned software company that sells a time series database kdb+, used for financial modeling and data analysis, and its associated proprietary programming language q.^[6][7]

KX Systems Inc.

Trade name	KX Systems
Company type	Private
Industry	Software & Tech Services
Founded	1993; 32 years ago (1993) in Palo Alto, California
Founders	Janet Lustgarten Arthur Whitney
Headquarters	New York, New York , United States
Number of locations	14 offices[1] (2018)
Area served	Asia Europe North America
Key people	Ashok Reddy[2] (CEO) Eric Raab[3] (CTO) David Humphries[4] (COO)[5]
Products	k kdb+ q
Parent	FD Technologies plc
Website	kx.com

It was founded in 1993 by Janet Lustgarten and Arthur Whitney,^[8] the developer of the K programming language. In 2014, First Derivatives increased their ownership interest to 65 percent; in 2018, the company (now FD Technologies plc) announced plans to buy out the remaining shares of KX.^[9] KX has offices in New York City, London, England, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.^[1][10]

Overview

In 1993, Whitney and Lustgarten joined to commercialize the k programming platform Whitney had created after building the A+ language and other trading systems at Morgan Stanley.^[7][11] The purpose of the software was to access and explore large data volumes in financial services computer systems.^[12] Initially, Kx Systems had an exclusive contract with Swiss global financial services firm UBS to provide them with the K language. In 1998, the contract with UBS expired and the firm launched the kdb+ database. As part of kdb+, Whitney developed a new language named q that operated with k and uses English keywords.^[13]

In 1999, the company reached a marketing agreement with a Northern Ireland based firm, First Derivatives.;^[14] it opened an office in Manhattan in 2002,^[15] Germany and Japan in 2003,^[16] and Hong Kong in 2009.^[17] In 2014, First Derivatives purchased a 65 percent share of Kx Systems.^[18] Kx became a technology supplier to NASA's Frontier Development Lab.^[19] In July 2018, FD Technologies bought all remaining shares in KX Systems that it did not already hold;^[20] Whitney and Lustgarten then went on to found Shakti.^[21][22]