Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems is the infrastructure engineering software company, founded in Exton, Pennsylvania in 1984 by the Bentley brothers and public on Nasdaq as BSY since September 2020. Its portfolio spans design, with MicroStation, the Open Applications and Seequent’s subsurface tools; project delivery, through ProjectWise and SYNCHRO in the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud; and asset operations through AssetWise, all underpinned by the Cesium and iTwin digital twin platform. The company reported $1.50 billion of 2025 revenue, up 11.0%, with annualized recurring revenue of $1.462 billion at year end and roughly 5,800 colleagues worldwide. It serves nearly 42,000 accounts in 189 countries, with public works and utilities accounting for about 59% of sector-attributable ARR.

Bentley Systems sells the software that infrastructure engineers draw, model and manage projects in. MicroStation for CAD, ProjectWise for project delivery, SYNCHRO for 4D construction planning, OpenRoads for roadway design, OpenFlows for water network analysis, STAAD for structural analysis, PLAXIS for geotechnical work, AutoPIPE for pipe stress, Power Line Systems for overhead transmission. The catalog reads like a list of engineering disciplines because that is how it was assembled.

Keith Bentley wrote the original software while working as a programmer at DuPont in Delaware, kept the rights, and launched the company with his brother Barry on September 5, 1984. Three more brothers joined. The offices they opened in Exton, Pennsylvania are still the global headquarters. Growth came through a long run of acquisitions: Haestad Methods, GEOPAK, STAAD and RAM, SACS, Plaxis, Synchro, Seequent for geoscience modeling, Power Line Systems and SPIDA for electric transmission, and Cesium. Each one filled in a discipline rather than duplicating one.

The company went public on Nasdaq on September 23, 2020, and annual recurring revenue passed $1 billion in 2022. Greg Bentley moved from CEO to Executive Chair in 2024, and Nicholas Cumins became the first non-family chief executive, with a stated focus on infrastructure resilience and artificial intelligence. Bentley now reports roughly 5,800 colleagues in 42 countries, about $1.5 billion in annual revenue, and more than 42,000 customer accounts across 189 countries. Cesium, Cohesive and Seequent operate as separate businesses under the group.

The current emphasis is on digital twins through the iTwin platform, open standards and APIs so data moves between vendors, and AI applied to engineering workflows, paired with an explicit commitment not to use customer data for AI training without consent. Sector focus runs across transportation, water, energy, cities and mining. ProjectWise is used by 46 U.S. state departments of transportation, and Bentley reports that 93 percent of top engineering firms and 72 percent of top owners are users.