SAS Institute Inc.
SAS aims to be the most trustworthy data and AI partner that powers the world's decisions. It makes advanced analytics, data management and AI easier to use so organizations can turn data into trusted insights and decisions.
At a Glance
- Large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies
- Small and midsize businesses
- Banking and financial services
- Insurance
- +7 more
AI Tools by SAS Institute Inc.
(1)
SAS Data Maker
Synthetic Data Generator for Azure
Discussions
No discussions yet
Be the first to start a discussion about SAS Institute Inc.
Latest News
SAS AI Navigator became available to supercharge AI governance, with free Microsoft Marketplace access for six months.
HSBC and SAS extended their strategic relationship, including an HSBC pilot of SAS Viya.
SAS and NC State launched an AI Think & Do Tank to advance health, nutrition and environmental-resilience research.
Liverpool FC announced SAS as its global partner and official AI marketing automation partner.
Products & Services
Cloud-native, cloud-agnostic data and AI platform unifying data management, analytics, model development, deployment, decisioning and governance across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments.
Low-code/no-code synthetic-data platform that generates high-fidelity, privacy-preserving data from existing sources or user-defined parameters, with quality, realism and privacy evaluation metrics.
Cloud-based coding environment for developers, data scientists and modelers using SAS or Python, with Visual Studio Code and Jupyter Notebook support; expanded in 2025 with R and Azure Marketplace availability.
Decisioning and agentic-AI capabilities for building and deploying purpose-built AI agents with configurable human oversight, explainability and governance.
Market Position
SAS positions itself as a trusted, enterprise-grade data and AI platform with deep industry expertise, strong statistical and analytics heritage, and governance, explainability and auditability built into the lifecycle. It competes with broad cloud and AI platforms such as Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, analytics/AI platforms such as IBM, Databricks, Palantir and Dataiku, and specialist data-science and decisioning vendors; its differentiators are integrated decisioning, regulated-industry controls, deployment flexibility and long-standing customer relationships.
Leadership
Founders
Jim Goodnight
Co-founder and CEO since SAS's inception. He earned a doctorate in statistics from NC State University and was an NC State faculty member from 1972 to 1976; he originally created SAS with colleagues to analyze agricultural research data.
John Sall
Co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS and founder/chair of JMP. He was a statistician and programmer associated with the NC State statistical research project and helped create the original SAS software.
Anthony James Barr
NC State statistical research project leader and one of the four people who left NC State to found SAS Institute in 1976; he later sold his stake in 1979.
Jane Helwig
Documentation writer and member of the NC State statistical research team; she joined Barr, Goodnight and Sall in founding SAS Institute in 1976.
Executive Team
Jim Goodnight
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Doctorate in statistics from NC State; NC State faculty member from 1972 to 1976; has led SAS since its founding.
John Sall
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President, SAS; Founder and Chair, JMP
Statistician and programmer from the NC State research project; creator of JMP.
Founding Story
SAS grew out of an NC State University research project that developed statistical software to analyze agricultural data. In 1976, Goodnight, Sall, Barr and Helwig incorporated SAS Institute to continue developing and commercializing the SAS program; the company opened in July with four employees and released Base SAS as its first product.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Enterprise software and services sold through subscriptions, managed-cloud services, software licenses and related implementation, consulting, support and training. SAS Viya and SAS Data Maker are also available through cloud marketplaces; SAS Data Maker uses a SaaS subscription for its control plane and an Azure Managed Application deployment in the customer's Azure tenant.
Pricing Tiers
14-day free trial is available; enterprise pricing is handled through a request-for-quote process.
SaaS subscription for the control plane plus customer-deployed Azure Managed Application data plane; Azure infrastructure costs are incurred by the customer.
Target Markets
- Large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies
- Small and midsize businesses
- Banking and financial services
- Insurance
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Manufacturing
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Risk management and regulatory compliance
- Customer intelligence, marketing automation and personalization
- Healthcare and life-sciences research, clinical analysis and operations
- Financial-services analytics and decisioning
- Government analytics and public-sector mission support
- Georgia-Pacific
- Liverpool FC
- World Wildlife Fund
- HSBC