About Autonomy®
The last closed layer of technology is opening. We're the ones opening it.
Servers moved to Linux, phones to Android and databases to PostgreSQL. Industrial control is one of the last layers of technology still locked to a single vendor's hardware, tools and licenses. Autonomy exists to change that, and OpenPLC is how we're doing it.
It started with an engineer up against automation lock-in
As an intern at an automotive plant, Thiago Alves was working on an automation project suffering from high costs and long lead times. No off-the-shelf control system made the numbers work. His instinct, as a student, was simple: why not build the control from scratch?
That idea became OpenPLC, the most widely used open-source PLC based on the IEC 61131-3 standard. Today it's the standard teaching platform for PLC programming and industrial cybersecurity in university labs, and it has been attacked, studied and hardened in the open by a decade of security research.
What started on one factory floor now runs in 150+ countries.
2014
Born on a factory floor
OpenPLC v1, built to rescue a cancelled automation project.
2016–2020
Proven by researchers
Versions 2 and 3, matured through academic and industrial cybersecurity research and adopted worldwide.
2023
Autonomy is founded
A company to support, develop and commercially back OpenPLC.
2024
Ready for industry
OpenPLC v4: a hardened runtime, a modern IDE and the high-performance StruC++ compiler.
2026
The full platform
Autonomy Edge, Autonomy Node and Vendor Plug-in Packages, built on the open core.
What we believe
Control belongs to the people who run it.
A factory runs for decades, often longer than the product lines of its controllers. The logic that runs it should be portable, inspectable and yours, not tied to one company's hardware, license server or product roadmap.
Open wins every layer, eventually.
Every layer of the computing stack has opened over time, and the open layer has always grown the hardware market underneath it rather than shrinking it. Control is next. We want that transition to happen with engineers, not to them.
Engineers deserve modern tools.
Software teams have had version control, collaboration, automated testing and AI assistance for twenty years. Controls engineers deserve the same, in the standard they already know.
- 1M+
- Downloads
- 150+
- Countries
- 500+
- Academic papers
- 12+
- Years of development
Built in the open, with the people who use it
OpenPLC has always been shaped by its community: students writing their first ladder program, researchers testing its security, and engineers running it on production lines. Its core code is open for anyone to read, learn from and improve. Autonomy exists to make sure that work has the long-term support, security and backing that enterprise customers need to rely on it.
Join developers, engineers and automation enthusiasts from around the world.
Build what comes next with us
Join the engineers, researchers and companies making industrial control open.