Elastic NV is an American-Dutch software company that provides self-managed and software as a service (SaaS) offerings for search, logging, cyber security, observability, analytics, and generative AI use cases.^[2][3] It was founded in 2012 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was previously known as Elasticsearch.^[4]

Elasticsearch is also implemented in use cases such as application search, site search, enterprise search, logging, infrastructure monitoring, application performance management, security analytics (also used to augment security information and event management applications), and business analytics. The Elasticsearch meetup community totals more than 100,000 members.^[5] Elastic is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ESTC.^[6]

The idea for a search engine product came to Shay Banon, one of Elastic's founders, in 2004 while he was developing a recipe software application for his wife, who was studying at Le Cordon Bleu.^[7][8] He built Elasticsearch in 2009 and spent three years developing the product along with the open-source community.^[9] In 2012, he co-founded the company Elasticsearch with Simon Willnauer, Steven Schuurman, and Uri Boness.^[7]

In 2015, the company acquired Found, a cloud-based Elasticsearch provider. Found offered a turnkey solution that automated processes such as installation, configuration, maintenance, and backup of Elasticsearch clusters. Following the acquisition, Found's products were integrated into Elastic's offerings.^[10] With the acquisition, the founders rebranded the company as Elastic, stating that it offered more than just search solutions. While the company had been informally referred to as Elastic since its inception, it was not its official name.^[11] The following year, Elastic acquired Prelert, a behavioral analytics vendor specializing in anomaly detection using machine learning, as part of its effort to compete with observability vendor Splunk. Banon stated that Elastic became interested in Prelert after encountering the company at one of its conferences years earlier and learning that it integrated with the Elastic ecosystem.^[12]

Citing headwinds from the global macroeconomic environment, Elastic NV announced a 13% reduction in headcount on November 30, 2022.^[13][14]

The company develops the Elastic Stack—Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash—previously known as the ELK Stack,^[15] free and paid proprietary features (formerly called X-Pack), Elastic Cloud (a family of SaaS offerings including the Elasticsearch Service), and Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE).^[16][17]

Elasticsearch technology is used by eBay, Wikipedia, Yelp, Uber, Lyft, Tinder, and Netflix.^[18][19]

Elastic N.V.,has made several strategic acquisitions to expand its product offerings and capabilities.

1. Prelert – In 2016, Elastic acquired Prelert, a machine learning company specializing in anomaly detection.^[12][20]
2. Swiftype – In 2017, Elastic acquired Swiftype, a provider of search and index software.^[21]
3. Endgame – In 2019, Elastic acquired Endgame, an endpoint security provider, for $234 million.^[22]
4. build.security – In 2021, Elastic acquired build.security, a cloud security company focusing on policy definition and enforcement.^[23][24]
5. Cmd – In 2021, Elastic acquired Cmd, a company that provides organizations with intuitive monitoring and control over their Linux environment.^[25]
6. Optimyze – The most recent acquisition was Optimyze on October 14, 2021 which is a cloud computing company based in Zurich.^[26]