Black Duck Software, Inc.

Black Duck Software, Inc. is an application security company founded in 2002 and headquartered near Boston, Massachusetts. It provides an integrated application security platform spanning Software Composition Analysis (SCA), Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and AI-powered security testing. The company is generally credited with pioneering the SCA market category, having originally built its offering to track open source components and licences.

The platform is designed to help organisations understand what open source code they are using, ensure compliance with licensing requirements, and secure the broader software supply chain. Its technical work covers open source component tracking and management, licence compliance, and vulnerability analysis of both source code and running applications. The addition of AI-driven testing reflects a response to the growth of AI-assisted development and tightening regulatory requirements around software provenance.

Black Duck reports serving more than 4,000 organisations worldwide. The company was acquired by Synopsys in 2014 and moved to independent ownership under Clearlake Capital and Francisco Partners in 2024, at which point it was rebranded simply as Black Duck. Its stated mission is to enable organisations to build secure, high-quality software while minimising risk and maintaining developer productivity.