Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American global company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratories.

[2][3] From 1999 to 2014, the company produced optics (LED, laser), semiconductors, EDA software and test and measurement equipment for electronics; that division was spun off to form Keysight.

These include: automation, bioreagents, FISH probes, gas and liquid chromatography, immunohistochemistry, informatics, mass spectrometry, microarrays, spectroscopy, target enrichment, and vacuum technologies.

[6] The company is known for investing in R&D within its own research labs and those of leading universities to advance the state of knowledge in the life sciences, diagnostics, and chemical analysis space.

[11] Agilent Technologies was created in 1999 as a spin-off of several business units of Hewlett-Packard[12] including test & measurement, optics, instrumentation and chemical analysis, electronic components, and medical equipment product lines.

[13][note 1] The split was predicated on the difficulty of growing HP's revenue stream and on the competitive vigor of smaller, more agile competitors.

[citation needed] In August 2005, Agilent announced the sale of its business which produced semiconductor integrated circuits (known as "chips") for consumer and industrial uses to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners for $2.66 billion.

[20] Agilent announced it would increase its life sciences engagement through the acquisition of Halo Genomics, based in Uppsala, Sweden, which was involved in next-generation sequencing technology development.

[21] On May 17, 2012, Agilent agreed to buy Dako, a Danish cancer diagnostics company, for $2.2 billion, to expand its presence in the life sciences industry.

[27] On July 7, 2016, Agilent announced that they had acquired U.K. based Cobalt Light Systems, which develops and manufactures Raman spectroscopy instruments, for £40 million in cash.