From Sysoev’s 2002 project to F5’s $670 million acquisition

The origins of a lightweight server

Igor Sysoev started developing NGINX in 2002. He worked as a system administrator at Rambler. He wanted to solve the C10K problem to handle ten thousand concurrent connections on a single server. He released the first version on October 4, 2004. This software used a BSD license.

Sysoev was born in 1970 in Kazakhstan. He studied at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. He wrote an antivirus called AV in 1989. That program used assembly language and detected viruses like Marijuana and Sofia. He joined Rambler on November 13, 2000. Before NGINX, he adapted Apache modules like mod_deflate and mod_accel. He learned to code on Iskra-226 computers using BASIC.

He worked alone.

Scaling and the F5 acquisition

The company NGINX, Inc. formed in 2011. Maxim Konovalov co-founded the business. NGINX Plus launched in 2013. F5 Networks acquired NGINX in March 2019 for $670 million.

You should know that NGINX handles high-traffic loads differently than Apache.

NGINX uses an event-driven architecture. A single worker process manages thousands of simultaneous connections. This design keeps the memory footprint nearly flat. Apache’s memory needs grow linearly as connections increase.

Investors provided significant funding over the years. Series A in 2011 brought in $3 million. A 2014 Series B round provided $20 million. A 2016 Series B round brought in $8 million. A 2018 Series C round brought in $43 million. Companies like Netflix and Starbucks use NGINX to reduce costs.

The NGINX team also provides NGINX Unit. It uses JSON for configuration. It exposes configuration via an HTTP API. It allows reconfiguration without restarts. It supports polyglot development for languages like Node.js and Go. NGINX Plus includes JWT authentication and real-time monitoring.

In January 2026, RootUsers Labs tested NGINX and Apache on identical hardware. NGINX served 12,500 requests per second at 10,000 concurrent connections. Apache Event reached only 4,800 requests per second. In March 2026, DigitalOcean tested a WordPress installation. NGINX achieved 920 requests per second with 42ms TTFB. Apache with mod_php delivered 850 requests per second with 58ms TTFB.

Legal disputes and market presence

The project faced a crisis in December 2019. Russian police searched the Moscow office of the NGINX developers. Igor Ippolitov reported the raid on Twitter. Rambler claimed that certain individuals created the software while working under company orders. They alleged that Sysoev violated copyright. The developers face the loss of the project and up to six years of imprisonment. This legal battle caused significant tension in the tech community. F5 confirmed the search but gave no details.

The litigation makes the product toxic.

The litigation ended.

Rambler estimated its losses at 51.4 million rubles in 2011. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd pursued the claims. This company linked back to Alexander Mamut. Sberbank acquired a 46.5% stake in Rambler. The investigation closed in June 2020 because the authorities found no evidence. Igor Sysoev left NGINX and F5 in 2022. He wanted to spend time with family. Maxim Konovalov remains.

By August 2026, NGINX holds a 31.3% market share according to W3Techs, which means it powers nearly a quarter of all websites while it outperforms Apache in high-concurrency environments through its highly efficient, event-driven architecture.

The software powers 475 million websites. Netflix relies on NGINX for streaming traffic.

What happens if a different company tries to revoke the license?

I find the necessity obvious.