Altair’s FlightStream Acquisition: “A New Way to Attack Aerodynamic Analysis,” claims James R Scapa

Altair is doubtlessly one of the most interesting companies in the simulation and analysis (S&A) business. Technologically, because of its broad portfolio covering a multitude of CAE-domains, but also from the angle of technology advancement as a reflection of a strong commercial stand. Founder and CEO James R Scapa has shown an almost insatiable appetite for expansion mirroring a desire for technological renewal and to move his creation to the absolute forefront of S&A and related capabilities in HPC, AI and more. Within the past decade this has resulted in an impressive expansion of the scope of its multi-physics, multi-domain, and data analytics offerings filling in the gaps in its strategic product plans. “Acquisitions have brought in new technologies and expertise in areas such as 3D solid modeling; electromagnetic interference and wave propagation simulation; electromagnetic field analysis of 3D structures; and much more,” notes analyst CIMdata in its 2023 simulation and analysis report. With these moves Altair has evolved from being a niche provider to a global enterprise-class engineering technology player. “From their roots in structural analysis software such as Hypermesh, Altair now provides software and cloud solutions in the areas of simulation-driven product development, high performance computing (HPC) and data intelligence.”
Commercially the CAE player is number five globally after leading Ansys, MathWorks, Dassault, and Siemens. Full year revenues 2023 was $ 663 million, representing an 8.2% growth compared to 2022.
Generally, automotive is the company’s largest sector, while aerospace & defense, and high-tech are smaller, but are growing faster.
This week’s big news in the CAE sub-PLM domain–Altair’s announced acquisition of Research in Flight, the developer of the FlightStream software–has visibly strong connections to this. Research in Flight’s CFD solution (Computational Fluid Dynamics) has a strong position in the aerospace and defense sectors and furthermore a growing presence in the marine, energy, turbomachinery and automotive applications.
Altair’s acquisition is an interesting reflection of what looks like Scapa’s primary desire to boost the growth and technological potential in the aerospace and defense (A&D) segment even more. They already have Altair CFD, a solution that offers a set of tools to solve fluid mechanics problems, but with Flightstream in the portfolio Altair can stretch its technological and commercial reach even further.
FlightStream is an easy-to-use and powerful flow solver that bridges the gap between high-fidelity CFD simulations and the needs of engineers and designers. Its exceptionally fast computational speed and low hardware load, combined with an optimized user interface and a robust aerodynamic solver, make it an invaluable tool for rapid early-stage design iterations and in-depth aerodynamic studies for A&D applications and beyond.
"Our growth in the A&D industry has accelerated in recent years thanks to our best-in-class computational intelligence solutions," said Scapa, adding that, "The integration of FlightStream into our portfolio will enhance our offering with its specialized, modern and efficient approach to meet the increasingly complex customer requirements in these industries, including the urban air mobility and eVTOL sectors."