AVAST Software a.s.

Avast was founded in Prague in 1988 — as a cooperative, in what was still Czechoslovakia — by Pavel Baudiš and Eduard Kučera, and built its business on something few competitors would try: giving a complete antivirus away. The free tier brought in hundreds of millions of users and the paid upgrades and bundled services made the money. It is no longer independent. Avast bought its Czech rival AVG in 2016, and in 2022 merged with NortonLifeLock to form Gen Digital, which now owns Avast, AVG and Norton alike; the site's own copyright line reads Gen Digital Inc. The current range is built around Avast One, which combines antivirus, VPN and device cleanup in one application, with Avast Free Antivirus as the free tier inside it and Avast Premium Security and Avast Ultimate above. Avast SecureLine VPN, Avast AntiTrack, Avast BreachGuard, Avast Cleanup Premium and Avast Secure Browser are sold alongside, and Avast Business Security covers small organisations. Avast and AVG have shared a detection engine since the acquisition, so their test scores move together rather than independently.

Country

🇨🇿Czechia

Headquarters

🇨🇿Prague, Czechia

Year Established

1988

Employees

2,000

Customers

740K organisations (2021)Vendor states: Avast Business Fact Sheet

Users

440M users (2017)Source: Avast press release (Gen Digital newsroom)

Revenue

$892.9M (2020)Source: Wikipedia

Website

https://www.avast.com/

Status

Acquired

Acquired by

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