It would soon merge with aircraft manufacturer ASJA (founded in 1931), located in Linköping, in 1940, which had it own design bureau and is considered the spiritual predecessor to today's Saab AB.

[2] At the time, however, there already was a competing company formed with this premise in 1931, by the name of ASJA (AB Svenska Järnvägsverkstädernas Aeroplanavdelning, lit.

ASJA had solicit Blomberg from Svenska Aero in 1930 and later purchased the company in 1932 along with their portfolio of designs, quickly making them the leading aeroplane manufacturer in Sweden at the time.

[2] Bofors started negotiating with ASJA in 1936 to see if they could enter into a sort of stock sharing consortium lead under a parent company.

Such a deal was struck in 1937, with support from the SAF, the parent company being named AB Förenade Flygverkstäder (AFF).

[2] Despite the consortium, SAAB in Trollhättan (previously Nohab Flygmotorfabrik AB) still had to compete with ASJA over contracts and the cooperation never came to fruition.

[2] The basic initial development was the problems for the Swedish government to get quality military aircraft delivered at the beginning of the Second World War.

From then on the Swedish government focused on establishing domestic production and development of military aircraft which Saab became involved in, a policy that has continued to this day.

[13] Following the sale of 50% of the car division Saab Automobile AB to General Motors, the main reason behind the merger with lorry manufacturer Scania-Vabis in 1968 had disappeared.

On 16 November 1999, Saab announced its intention is to purchase Celsius AB and the acquisition was concluded by early March 2000.

[17] In March 2010, BAE Systems sold half of its 20% stake in the company to Investor AB, which then became the major shareholder.

[19] As of August 2020, Investor AB owns a 30.16% stake in the company (39.69% of the voting rights) and is the top owner.

[21] In September 2023, it was announced Saab had acquired the San Francisco–headquartered artificial intelligence / machine learning development company CrowdAI.

Saab has been making aircraft since the 1930s, and the jet predecessors of the JAS 39 Gripen were the Tunnan, the Lansen, the Draken and the Viggen.

In May 2019, Saab announced plans to locate a new U.S. manufacturing operation in Discovery Park District Aerospace on the west side of the Purdue University campus.

The facility will do the final assembly of the T-X advanced jet trainer, which is a plane developed by Boeing and Saab for the United States Air Force.

Aeronautics is also partner in the European joint UAV-project Dassault nEUROn, where Saab develop avionics and is responsible for the overall architecture and design.

[30] The Saab Barracuda LLC facility in Lillington, North Carolina, manufactures signature management products and provides customized services.

[31] Saab Barracuda is one of only two qualified suppliers of ULCANS in North America, and currently has a competed US$1.76 billion contract, along with GMA Cover Corp.[32] The Kockums shipyard is the base for the company's submarine division.