In July 2010, Symyx Technologies and Accelrys signed a merger agreement with the firm going forard to be known as Accelrys. Symyx Technologies, Inc. (Symyx) provides high-speed technologies for the discovery of new materials. The Company's proprietary technologies, including instruments, software and methods, represent complete processes designed to cost-effectively accelerate materials discovery. The Company creates hundreds to thousands of unique materials at one time and screens these materials rapidly and automatically for desired properties.Symyx is a global leader in helping companies maximize the effectiveness and success of their R&D programs. Our unique approach integrates electronic lab notebook and execution and analysis software, lab automation and breakthrough materials technology. Symyx develops and applies informatics and high-throughput research technologies for the entire R&D process, from early discovery through development to commercialization. By partnering with us, purchasing our hardware or licensing our software, companies can leverage our industry-level investments in Symyx Labs, Software and Tools to improve their R&D execution. Employing our proprietary technology methods, high-throughput tools, and software, they are creating new breakthroughs in laboratory performance and materials discovery. Symyx Software combines experiment design, execution and decision-support to provide a unique solution that saves time for scientists while providing information transparency to the business. Designed by scientists for scientists, Symyx Software is at work in the world's leading R&D organizations, where it is helping to deliver breakthrough results. Symyx Tools provide R&D workflows to automate complete lab processes, increasing testing capacity by 10-100 times. Symyx Tools integrate Symyx materials handling and analytical instrumentation with third-party equipment in order to combine experimental procedures and unify data management. Running up to 384 high-content experiments in parallel across automated instrumentation with integrated control and analytics, Symyx Tools give scientific teams the breakthrough capabilities needed to compete. Symyx licenses intellectual property to create value by encouraging the widespread use of our innovations in the materials field. We offer selective access to this intellectual property through patent licensing, materials licensing, technology licensing, and OEM software licensing. In patent licensing, we enable customers to implement initial approaches to high-throughput materials research in their laboratories by licensing certain patents, including our broad methodology patents. We also license materials discovered in our collaborative and internal research efforts in return for royalties. Finally, we license certain technologies and software to instrument manufacturers in return for payments and royalties. Symyx has also launched new companies to independently pursue Symyx-developed technologies. In 2003, Symyx formed Ilypsa, Inc., a pharmaceutical company pusuing non-absorbed, GI-based drugs for renal and metabolic diseases applying proprietary high-throughput technologies originally created and validated at Symyx. In 2006, Symyx formed Visyx Technologies Inc. to develop and pursue commerical applications of proprietary sensor technologies that originally were developed for use within Symyx's internal research programs. Symyx has a minority interest in both Ilypsa and Visyx, both of which also have venture capital investors.
