Harman International

Harman International Industries, Inc. is an American company that designs, engineers, and manufactures connected products for automakers and consumers.

It has a large collection of audio equipment brands, ranging from popular consumer-grade to premium HiFi manufacturers. These include AKG, Bang & Olufsen, Harman Kardon, JBL, Mark Levinson, and Revel, etc. As of 2017, it is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.

The predecessor of Harman International, Harman Kardon, was founded in 1953 by Sidney harman and Bernard Kardon. Thanks to commercial success, Harman Kardon started acquiring other audio equipment manufacturers in the 1960s. As Harman was appointed to the Carter administration in 1976, he sold his company, which was then partly sold off.

After leaving the government in 1978, Harman created Harman International Industries and re-aquired many businesses he had sold before. The company continued to expand through acquisitions throughout the decades that followed, until it was acquired by Samsung for $8 billion in cash.