Elastic
Headquarters
Mountain View, CAFounded
2012CEO / Founder
Ash KulkarniEmployees
1001-5000Funding
Public — $104MStock
ESTCProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.5/10Website
elastic.co/
Profile updated
About Elastic
Elastic N.V. is the company behind Elasticsearch, a distributed search and analytics engine, along with the broader Elastic Stack (formerly known as the ELK Stack, comprising Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana). The company was founded in 2012 by Shay Banon, Steven Schuurman, Uri Boness, and Simon Willnauer, building on the open-source Elasticsearch project Banon originally created in 2010. Elastic is headquartered in Mountain View, California, though it operates as a distributed company with employees across many countries.
The company's core products span three main solution areas: Elastic Enterprise Search, Elastic Observability, and Elastic Security, all built on the Elasticsearch and Kibana foundation. Its technology is used for full-text search, log and metrics analysis, application performance monitoring, and security information and event management (SIEM). Customers include organizations across finance, retail, government, and technology sectors, with the software deployed both self-managed and as a hosted service, Elastic Cloud, available on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure marketplaces.
Elastic raised approximately $104 million in venture funding from investors including Benchmark, NEA, and Index Ventures prior to its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2018 under the ticker ESTC. In 2021, the company changed its open-source license from Apache 2.0 to a dual-license model using the Server Side Public License (SSPL) and Elastic License, a decision it later partially reversed in 2024 by relicensing Elasticsearch and Kibana under AGPL. Elastic has made several acquisitions over the years, including Opbeat, Swiftype, and Endgame, expanding its capabilities in application performance monitoring, site search, and endpoint security respectively.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Elastic
All products by Elastic reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
Competitive Landscape
Who Elastic competes with, and how they differ.
Splunk leads on-prem and hybrid SIEM/log analytics with premium ingest-based pricing and deep enterprise security workflows, versus Elastic's open-source-rooted, usage-based model and unified search/observability/security stack.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Datadog is a fully-managed, cloud-native SaaS observability platform (APM, infra, logs) billed per-host/per-GB, while Elastic offers a self-hostable, dual-licensed stack (Elastic Cloud, on-prem, or air-gapped) built on a full-text search engine core.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedOpenSearch is the Apache 2.0 fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana that AWS launched in January 2021 after Elastic relicensed under SSPL; it competes directly on the same search/analytics engine and is now governed by the Linux Foundation.
Grafana Labs' open-source LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, Mimir for metrics) undercuts Elastic on cost for log aggregation using object storage, though it lacks Elasticsearch's full-text search depth and native SIEM tooling.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Algolia focuses narrowly on hosted search-as-a-service for websites and apps (instant search UX, developer APIs) — a fraction of Elastic's scope, which spans general-purpose search, observability, and security analytics.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedDynatrace sells AI-driven, agent-based full-stack observability (its Davis AI engine) at a premium enterprise price point, competing with Elastic Observability on APM/infrastructure monitoring but without Elastic's open-source search engine core.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in Elastic's history, with sources.
- Milestone
Cuts about 7% of workforce in AI-driven reorganization
CEO Ash Kulkarni announced a restructuring that cut roughly 7% of staff and simplified engineering into three units as AI and automation reshape operations, while still projecting overall headcount growth for the fiscal year.
elastic.co - Acquisition
Reportedly acquires Deductive AI for up to $85M
Elastic reportedly acquired AI site-reliability-engineering startup Deductive AI in a deal worth up to $85 million, more than double Deductive's post-seed valuation, to add automated infrastructure troubleshooting on top of Elasticsearch.
siliconangle.com - Milestone
Adds AGPL license, returning Elasticsearch/Kibana to open source
Three years after relicensing under SSPL, founder Shay Banon announced Elastic would add the OSI-approved AGPL as a third license option for Elasticsearch and Kibana, letting the company again call the software open source.
elastic.co - Milestone
Lays off about 13% of workforce
CEO Ash Kulkarni announced a roughly 13% headcount reduction, citing customers tightening budgets amid a weaker macroeconomic environment, especially among small and midsize businesses.
elastic.co - Milestone
Ash Kulkarni replaces Shay Banon as CEO
Elastic named Ashutosh Kulkarni, a former McAfee executive who had joined as Chief Product Officer in January 2021, as CEO; co-founder Shay Banon moved to Executive Chairman and CTO.
cnbc.com - Milestone
AWS forks Elasticsearch and Kibana, the project later named OpenSearch
One week after Elastic's relicensing, AWS announced it would create and maintain an Apache 2.0-licensed fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana; the fork was later named OpenSearch and is now governed by the Linux Foundation.
aws.amazon.com - Milestone
Relicenses Elasticsearch and Kibana under SSPL/Elastic License
Elastic moved Elasticsearch and Kibana source code from Apache 2.0 to a dual SSPL/Elastic License, blocking cloud providers from reselling the software as a managed service without contributing back — a direct response to AWS's competing hosted offering.
elastic.co - Acquisition
Acquires Endgame for $234M
Elastic acquired endpoint security company Endgame for $234 million, its largest deal to date, pushing the company into the SIEM and endpoint-security market alongside Splunk.
zdnet.com - Milestone
IPOs on NYSE (ESTC), raising $252M
Elastic priced its IPO at $36 per share, above its marketed range, selling 7 million shares to raise $252 million; the stock closed its first trading day at $70, up 94%, implying a roughly $4.86 billion valuation.
cnbc.com - Acquisition
Acquires Swiftype
Elastic acquired Swiftype, a San Francisco-based site-search and app-search startup, extending its search-as-a-service offerings beyond the core open-source stack.
techcrunch.com - Funding
Series C — $70M
Elasticsearch raised a $70 million Series C round roughly 18 months after the company was formed, to fund international expansion and hiring.
techcrunch.com - Founded
Elasticsearch B.V. incorporated in Amsterdam
Shay Banon incorporated the company in the Netherlands (originally as Searchworkings Global B.V.) two years after releasing the open-source Elasticsearch engine; co-founders included Steven Schuurman, Uri Boness, and Simon Willnauer.
sec.gov
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