Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has offices worldwide. Its U.S. offices are located in the states of California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Its Canadian offices are located in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia.
The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, who was a co-author of the first versions of AutoCAD. AutoCAD is the company's flagship computer-aided design (CAD) software and, along with its 3D design software Revit, is primarily used by architects, engineers, and structural designers to design, draft, and model buildings and other structures. Autodesk software has been used in many fields, and on projects from the One World Trade Center to Tesla electric cars.
Autodesk became best known for AutoCAD, but now develops a broad range of software for design, engineering, and entertainment—and a line of software for consumers. The manufacturing industry uses Autodesk's digital prototyping software—including Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Fusion, and the Autodesk Product Design Suite—to visualize, simulate, and analyze real-world performance using a digital model in the design process. The company's Revit line of software for building information modeling is designed to let users explore the planning, construction, and management of a building virtually before it is built.
Autodesk's Media and Entertainment division creates software for visual effects, color grading, and editing as well as animation, game development, and design visualization. 3ds Max and Maya are both 3D animation software used in film visual effects and game development.
History The company was founded by John Walker, Daniel Drake, and 14 other programmers in April 1982, who invested $60,000. Walker founded the company after acquiring Interact, a computer-aided design program that operated on microcomputers running the 8-bit CP/M operating system and two of the new 16-bit systems, the Victor 9000 and the IBM Personal Computer (PC). This tool made it affordable for smaller design, engineering, and architecture companies to create detailed technical drawings. The program had been developed by Michael Riddle in 1979. Riddle had struggled to sell the program, and agreed to sell it to Walker in exchange for royalties. The program was further developed and renamed AutoCAD.
The cofounders were unsure of which area of technology to pursue, so founded the company first and planned as many as five different software applications to see which would succeed. Walker later said that he thought CAD was a niche field ("I mean, just compare the number of architects with the number of people that write documents"), but strong public reaction to AutoCAD at its debut at the 1982 Comdex in Las Vegas, and disinterest in the text editor that was Autodesk's other product there, caused the company to focus on CAD. AutoCAD went on sale in December 1982 and earned $1.4 million in revenue in its first year. Walker said in December 1984 that Autodesk was profitable from its first month and had not needed loans or outside investors. By then the company had about 10,000 AutoCAD systems installed; it was so successful that for a while Autodesk implied that AutoCAD was the company's name. The company continued to see itself as a general-purpose software company until new CEO Carol Bartz ended diversification outside computer-aided design in the early 1990s.
Autodesk became a public company in 1985. John Walker did not enjoy the process of writing the prospectus, relating the process to "lying on the beach or juggling chainsaws".
Release 2.1 of AutoCAD, released in 1986, included AutoLISP, a built-in Lisp programming language interpreter initially based on XLISP. This opened the door for third party developers to extend AutoCAD's functionality, to address a wide range of vertical markets, strengthening AutoCAD's market penetration.
Subsequent to AutoCAD Release 13, the company stopped supporting the Unix environment and the Apple Macintosh platform. After AutoCAD Release 14 (R13 was last DOS & Unix release), first shipped in 1997, Autodesk discontinued development under DOS, and focused exclusively on Microsoft Windows.
AutoCAD has grown to become the most widely used CAD program for 2D non-specialized applications. The native file formats written by AutoCAD, DXF and DWG, are also widely used for CAD data interoperability.
In 1989, Autodesk's sales grew to over $100,000,000 after just four operational years.
Walker remained a programmer at Autodesk until 1994, when he left due to disagreements with changes at the company. With the purchase of Softdesk in 1997, Autodesk started to develop specialty versions of AutoCAD, targeted to broad industry segments, including architecture, civil engineering, and manufacturing. Since the late 1990s, the company has added several significant non-AutoCAD-based products, including Revit, a parametric building modeling application (acquired in 2002, from Massachusetts-based Revit Technologies for $133 million), and Inventor, an internally developed parametric mechanical design CAD application.
In 2007, Timothy Vernor sued Autodesk (Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc.), alleging that he was entitled to resell "used" copies of AutoCAD software on eBay. He had obtained the software from an Autodesk licensee at an office liquidation sale. A federal district judge in Washington denied Autodesk's initial motion to dismiss in early 2008. In February and March 2009, both sides filed motions for summary judgment addressing the issue whether the First Sale Doctrine applies to previously licensed software. The Court ruled in Vernor's favor, holding that when the transfer of software to the purchaser materially resembled a sale (non-recurring price, right to perpetual possession of copy) it was, in fact, a "sale with restrictions on use"United States v. Wise, 550 F.2d 1180 (9th Cir. 1977). giving rise to a right to resell the copy under the first-sale doctrine. As such, Autodesk could not pursue an action for copyright infringement against Vernor, who sought to resell used versions of its software on eBay. Autodesk appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reversed the lower court ruling, denying Vernor the right to resale Autodesk software due to Autodesk's nontransferable licensing restrictions. In October 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
Autodesk introduced a new logo at the TED conference in Long Beach, California, on February 26, 2013.Autodesk Unveils New Brand . Cadalyst. February 26, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.Autodesk unveils new logo as part of in-house rebrand . Digital Arts. March 26, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.Not Your Father’s Autodesk . In the Fold. February 26, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
Autodesk announced the largest lay off in its history on November 27, 2017, with the lay off of 1,150 jobs. This was in addition to the almost 1,000 job cuts announced in January 2016. The number of Autodesk employees decreased from approximately 9,200 to 7,200 in less than 2 years.
Autodesk updated to its current logo in September 2021.
In 2022, Autodesk moved its headquarters to San Francisco from San Rafael, California—which served as its headquarters since 1994.
In 2025, Autodesk layoffs of 1,350 employees roughly 9% of its workforce as part of restructuring effort to focus on AI and cloud computing.
In January 2026, Autodesk shed about 7% of its global workforce. This amounted to approximately 1000 jobs.
In February 2026, Autodesk announced its investment of $200 million in World Labs, an AI spatial intelligence company who specializes in multimodal world models. The world models developed by World Labs are able to generate realistic 3D worlds that can manipulated, simulated, reconstructed, and interacted with by both human users and AI agents. Autodesk's collaboration with World Labs aims to advance physical-world AI via technical exploration inspired by customer desires and real-world outcomes. Additionally, World Labs announced their mission to revolutionize storytelling, creativity, robotics, scientific discovery, and more using the new funding and knowledge Autodesk brings. Autodesk will serve as an advisor to World Labs with collaboration in research and world model development. According to AutoDesk News, the investment in World Labs is a deliberate choice to pursue a more human centered path when developing and using AI solutions.
Corporate acquisitions In 1992 Autodesk acquired Micro Engineering Solutions (MES) Inc., a developer and marketer of manufacturing CAD / CAM software.Micro Engineering Solutions, Inc. In 1993 Autodesk acquired Ithaca Software, a 3D computer graphics company founded by Autodesk's former CEO Carl Bass and Garry Wiegand. In December 1996, Autodesk announced its plan to acquire Softdesk, a developer of architecture, engineering and construction software. In 1998 Autodesk acquired assets of Genius CAD-Software to strengthen the functionality of its core mechanical products. In August 1998, Autodesk agreed to acquire Discreet Logic Inc. for about $520 million in stock. In 1999, Autodesk acquired VISION* Solutions, a vendor of enterprise automated mapping/facilities management/geographic information systems (AM/FM/GIS) from MCI Systemhouse Corp. In January 2001, Autodesk acquired Gentry Systems, a supplier of specialized software tools and services in the electric utility industry. The asset was used to strengthen Autodesk's position in the utility industry. In September 2001, Autodesk acquired Buzzsaw. In February 2002, Autodesk acquired Revit Technology Corporation, a developer of parametric building technology for building design, construction, and management. In August 2002, Autodesk acquired CAiCE Software Corporation, a developer of surveying and engineering applications for transportation agencies and consultants; the product was released in 2003 as "Civil 3D". In December 2002, Autodesk acquired the assets of truEInnovations, Inc. to create the application Autodesk Vault. In 2003 Autodesk acquired Linius Technologies, Inc. and purchased certain assets of a third software company—VIA Development Corporation. In 2004 Autodesk acquired MechSoft, Inc., the developer of the MechSoft product. In 2005 Autodesk acquired the assets of COMPASS systems GmbH, to strengthen Autodesk's position in the European product data management market. In 2006 Autodesk acquired Alias, with its automotive styling and digital content creation applications such as FBX file format. On August 6, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of Skymatter Inc, developer of Mudbox. On August 9, 2007, Autodesk completed the acquisition of NavisWorks Limited. On August 20, 2007, Autodesk announced that it completed the acquisition of technology and product assets of Opticore AB in Gothenburg, Sweden. Opticore is specialized in real time visualization primarily for the carmakers industry. On August 28, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of PlassoTech, developers of CAE applications. In January 2008, Autodesk completed the acquisition of Robobat, a France-based developer of structural engineering analysis applications. In February 2008, Autodesk announced that it completed the acquisition of the assets of Carmel Software Corporation. On May 1, 2008, Autodesk announced it agreed to acquire Moldflow Corporation, a leading provider of injection molding simulation software.