Leidos

Leidos Holdings, Inc. is an American defense, aviation, information technology, and biomedical research company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, that provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services. Founded as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Leidos merged with '''Lockheed Martin's IT sector, Information Systems & Global Solutions (Lockheed Martin IS&GS'''), in August 2016 to create the defense industry’s largest IT services provider. The Leidos-Lockheed Martin merger is one of the biggest transactions thus far in the consolidation of the defense sector. Leidos contracts extensively with the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community, as well as other U.S. government agencies and select commercial markets.

==History== ===As SAIC=== thumb|right|SAIC company logo (2010) The company was founded by J. Robert "Bob" Beyster in 1969 in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, as Science Applications Incorporated (SAI). Beyster, a former scientist for the Westinghouse Atomic Power Division and Los Alamos National Laboratory, who became the chairman of the Accelerator Physics Department of General Atomics in 1957, raised the money to start SAI by selling stock he had received from General Atomics, combined with funds raised from the early employees who bought stock in the young enterprise.