It was founded in 1993 by Janet Lustgarten and
Arthur Whitney,[8] the developer of the
K programming language. In 2014, First Derivatives increased their ownership interest to 65 percent; in 2018, the company (now FD Technologies plc) announced plans to buy out the remaining shares of KX.[9] KX has offices in
New York City,
London, England,
Ireland,
Germany,
Australia,
Singapore,
Tokyo, and
Hong Kong.[1][10]
Overview
In 1993, Whitney and Lustgarten joined to commercialize the k programming platform Whitney had created after building the
A+ language and other trading systems at
Morgan Stanley.[7][11] The purpose of the software was to access and explore large data volumes in financial services computer systems.[12] Initially, Kx Systems had an exclusive contract with
Swiss global
financial services firm
UBS to provide them with the K language. In 1998, the contract with UBS expired and the firm launched the
kdb+ database. As part of
kdb+, Whitney developed a new language named
q that operated with k and uses English keywords.[13]
In 1999, the company reached a marketing agreement with a
Northern Ireland based firm, First Derivatives.;[14] it opened an office in
Manhattan in 2002,[15]Germany and
Japan in 2003,[16] and
Hong Kong in 2009.[17] In 2014, First Derivatives purchased a 65 percent share of Kx Systems.[18] Kx became a technology supplier to
NASA's Frontier Development Lab.[19] In July 2018, FD Technologies bought all remaining shares in KX Systems that it did not already hold;[20] Whitney and Lustgarten then went on to found Shakti.[21][22]