Tungsten Automation was founded in 1985 as Kofax Image Products by engineers Dean Hough and David Silver, who worked together at document processing company
FileNet. Silver became the company's chief executive officer and president. The company initially focused on making personal computer circuit boards to convert them into image-processing machines, and its first products were released in 1989. In October 1997, the company went public on the
Nasdaq market. In July 1999, the company announced it would be purchased by UK-based holding company DICOM Group in a reported US$75 million cash deal, with the intent to pair Kofax Image Products, Inc.’s digital capture technology with DICOM Group's distribution services in
Europe. In April 2003, Kofax acquired Mohomine Inc., an automated text classification and extraction developer. In December 2005, Dicom Group / Kofax Inc. appointed Rob Klatell as CEO of Dicom. In November 2007, then CEO Rob Klatell was replaced by Reynolds Bish, former CEO of
Captiva Software, now part of
OpenText. In May 2011, Kofax Inc. announced the acquisition of Atalasoft Inc., an image software company whose primary product was a document imaging toolkit named dotImage. In December, Kofax Inc.’s US$48 million bid to purchase London IT company Singularity was accepted. This acquisition enabled business process management (BPM) and case management software to exist through public or private
SaaS (software as a service) platforms. In the summer of 2013, Kofax added
robotic process automation (RPA) developer Kapow Software (now: Kofax RPA). In December, Kofax Inc. was added to the Nasdaq Stock Market as (KFX). In September 2014, Kofax acquired
Softpro, an e-signature and signature verification software company in
Stuttgart, Germany, as a separate entity. In March 2015, Kofax Inc. purchased Aia Holding, a customer communications management company in
The Netherlands, in a US$19.5 million cash deal. Also in March, the company introduced Mobile ID, image validation software for capturing proof-of-identity documents required for secure processes such as opening bank accounts. After the acquisition closed, Kofax Inc. combined with
Perceptive Software, a subsidiary of Lexmark, to form an expanded business content and management software unit of their parent company. In July 2017, private equity and
growth capital firm Thoma Bravo acquired Lexmark's Enterprise Software business which consisted of three entities: Kofax,
ReadSoft, and Perceptive Software. Following this, Kofax and ReadSoft combined into a single, newly independent Thoma Bravo portfolio company. By means of this acquisition, Kofax gained Nuance's Power PDF,
PaperPort document management and
OmniPage optical character recognition software applications. In May 2019, Kofax acquired Top Image Systems (NASDAQ:TISA)(TIS). In June 2021, Kofax announced the acquisition of PSIGEN Software, Inc., a provider of document capture, content management and workflow automation software and solutions. In August, the company announced the acquisition of cloud-based print management system provider Printix.net. In June 2022, Kofax completed its acquisition of Tungsten Corporation (AIM: TUNG), a global B2B e-invoicing network that facilitates and streamlines complex invoice-to-pay processes. In July 2022, Clearlake Capital and
TA Associates completed their acquisition of the company from Thoma Bravo. In August 2022, Kofax completed the acquisition of Ephesoft Inc., a provider of Intelligent Document Process (IDP) solutions. On January 16, 2024, Kofax was renamed to Tungsten Automation. On July 1, 2025, Peter Hantman was appointed to CEO. ==Products==