SAS Institute
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | July 1, 1976 |
| Founder | Anthony James Barr James Goodnight John Sall Jane Helwig |
| Headquarters | Cary, North Carolina, U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | James Goodnight, CEO and Co-founder John Sall, Co-founder and Executive Vice President |
| Products | SAS (software) SAS language SAS Viya JMP |
| Revenue | US$ 3+ billion (2024) |
Number of employees | 10,000+ (2025) |
| Website | www |
35°49′37″N 78°45′44″W / 35.82694°N 78.76222°W
SAS Institute (or SAS, pronounced "sass") is an American multinational developer of analytics and artificial intelligence software based in Cary, North Carolina. SAS develops and markets a suite of analytics software (also called SAS), which helps access, manage, analyze and report on data to aid in decision-making. The company's software is used by most of the Fortune 500.
SAS Institute started as a project at North Carolina State University to create a statistical analysis system, in fact SAS originally stood for "Statistical Analysis System", though it is no longer considered an acronym. It was originally used primarily by agricultural departments at universities in the late 1960s. It became an independent, private business led by current CEO James Goodnight and three other project leaders from the university in 1976.
SAS is one of the largest privately held software providers in the world, and the company's software is used by most of the Fortune 500. The company's revenue grew from $10 million in 1980 to $3.2 billion in 2022. Historically, it has spent a notably higher proportion of its annual revenue on research and development than most other software companies.