F5, INC. (FFIV)

F5 is a multicloud application delivery and security provider, incorporated in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, that partners with large enterprises, public sector institutions, governments, and service providers to optimize and secure applications and APIs across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. The company operates globally across three regions—Americas, EMEA, and APAC—and offers solutions through perpetual, subscription, and usage-based consumption models, including packaged software, SaaS, managed services, hardware systems, and global services such as maintenance, consulting, and training. Its core product families include F5 BIG-IP (feature-rich application delivery and security for legacy/traditional applications, including packaged software and hardware systems like rSeries and VELOS), F5 NGINX (lightweight, developer-friendly solutions for modern, container-native and microservices-based applications, including NGINX Plus, NGINX One Console, NGINX Ingress Controller, and WAF for NGINX), and F5 Distributed Cloud Services (a SaaS-based portfolio covering web app/API protection, multicloud networking, DNS, CDN, and app orchestration, delivered via the F5 Global Network).

In 2025, F5 introduced the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) to unify traffic management and security across hybrid multicloud environments, and it is pursuing a four-pronged AI strategy encompassing AI workload security, AI-enhanced products, new AI-driven offerings, and AI partnerships. The company outsources hardware manufacturing primarily to Flex Ltd., with assembly in Guadalajara, Mexico and Zhuhai, China, and pursues acquisitions to complement organic growth, including the September 2025 acquisition of CalypsoAI to bolster AI inference security. Competitors vary by segment and include Citrix, Broadcom, Cisco, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Akamai, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Radware, and Thales (Imperva), among others.

As of September 30, 2025, F5 had 6,578 employees across 47 countries, with 47% based in the U.S. and no unionized U.S. workforce, and it maintains active human capital, diversity and inclusion, and ESG programs, including a 2030 science-based emissions reduction target. On October 15, 2025, F5 disclosed a cybersecurity incident involving long-term unauthorized access and file exfiltration by a threat actor, details of which are addressed elsewhere in the filing. The report also lists F5's executive leadership team, led by President and CEO François Locoh-Donou.