Red Hat

Red Hat, LLC (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc. and then Red Hat, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.

Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating systemRed Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Having grown significantly beyond just Linux, it also includes the OpenShift Container Platform, Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat AI.

Red Hat had acquired the open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat now offers OpenShift Virtualization, which replaces the long retired product Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), an enterprise virtualization product. Red Hat provides operating system platforms, middleware, applications, management products, support, training, and consulting services.

Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects. It has acquired the codebases of several proprietary software products through corporate mergers and acquisitions, and has released such software under open source licenses. In 2025, Red Hat was the third-largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel, accounting for 6.5% of the changes, behind Intel and Google.

On October 28, 2018, IBM announced its intent to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion. The acquisition closed on July 9, 2019, and it now operates as an independent subsidiary. On January 12, 2026, Red Hat converted from a corporation to a limited liability company.