Anaconda is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

platform for

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

and R

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s. Developed by Anaconda, Inc., an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

company founded in 2012, the platform is used to develop and manage data science and AI projects.https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/anaconda_puts_the_squeeze_on/ In 2024, Anaconda Inc. has about 300 employees and 45 million users.

History

Co-founded in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

in 2012 as Continuum Analytics by Peter Wang and

Travis Oliphant Travis Oliphant is an American data scientist, software developer, and entrepreneur known for his contributions to the Python scientific computing ecosystem. He is the primary creator of Numpy, a foundational package for numerical computation i ...

, Anaconda Inc. operates from the United States and Europe. Anaconda Inc. developed Conda, a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

, language-agnostic binary

package manager A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

. It also launched PyData community workshops and the Jupyter Cloud Notebook service (Wakari.io). In 2013, it received funding from

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

. In 2015, the company had two million users including 200 of the

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

companies and raised $24 million in a

Series A A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

funding round led by

General Catalyst General Catalyst (GC) is a global investment and transformation company that makes seed to growth stage investments and beyond. The firm has invested in 800+ businesses, including global companies such as Airbnb, Anduril Industries, Applied In ...

and BuildGroup. Anaconda secured an additional $30 million in funding in 2021. Continuum Analytics rebranded as Anaconda in 2017. That year, it announced the release of Anaconda Enterprise 5, an integration with

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

, and had over 13 million users by year's end. In 2022, it released Anaconda Business; new integrations with Snowflake and others; and the open-source PyScript. It also acquired PythonAnywhere, while Anaconda's user base exceeded 30 million in 2022. In 2023, Anaconda released Python in Excel, a new integration with

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...

, and launched PyScript.com. The company made a series of investments in AI during 2024. That February, Anaconda partnered with

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

to import its repository of Python packages into Watsonx, IBM's

generative AI Generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and str ...

platform. The same year, Anaconda joined IBM's AI Alliance and released an integration with

Teradata Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and Analytics, analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers a ...

and

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

. In 2024, Anaconda's user base reached 45 million users and Barry Libert was named company CEO, after serving on Anaconda's board of directors.

Overview

Anaconda distribution comes with over 300 packages automatically installed, and over 7,500 additional open-source packages can be installed from the Anaconda repository as well as the Conda package and

virtual environment A virtual environment is a networked application that allows a user to interact with both the computing environment and the work of other users. Email, chat, and web-based document sharing applications are all examples of virtual environments. Sim ...

manager. It also includes a

GUI Gui or GUI may refer to: People Surname * Gui (surname), an ancient Chinese surname, ''xing'' * Bernard Gui (1261 or 1262–1331), inquisitor of the Dominican Order * Luigi Gui (1914–2010), Italian politician * Gui Minhai (born 1964), Ch ...

, Anaconda Navigator, as a graphical alternative to the

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

(CLI). Conda was developed to address dependency conflicts native to the pip package manager, which would automatically install any dependent Python packages without checking for conflicts with previously installed packages (until its version 20.3, which later implemented consistent dependency resolution). The Conda package manager's historical differentiation analyzed and resolved these installation conflicts. Anaconda is a

of the

and R

s for

scientific computing Computational science, also known as scientific computing, technical computing or scientific computation (SC), is a division of science, and more specifically the Computer Sciences, which uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and s ...

(

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

applications, large-scale

data processing Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information. Data processing is a form of ''information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an o ...

predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of Statistics, statistical techniques from data mining, Predictive modelling, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or other ...

, etc.), that aims to simplify

package management A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

and

deployment Deployment may refer to: * Military deployment, the movement of armed forces and their logistical support * Software deployment, all of the activities that make a software system available for use * System deployment The deployment of a mecha ...

. Anaconda distribution includes data-science packages suitable for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. Other company products include Anaconda Free, and subscription-based Starter, Business and Enterprise. Anaconda's business tier offers Package Security Manager. Package versions in Anaconda are managed by the package management system Conda, which was spun out as a separate

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

package as useful both independently and for applications other than Python. There is also a small, bootstrap version of Anaconda called Miniconda, which includes only Conda, Python, the packages they depend on, and a small number of other packages. Open source packages can be individually installed from the Anaconda repository, Anaconda Cloud (anaconda.org), or the user's own private repository or mirror, using the conda install command. Anaconda, Inc. compiles and builds the packages available in the Anaconda

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

itself, and provides

binaries A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files ...

for

32/

64 bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, ad ...

, Linux 64 bit and

MacOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

64-bit (Intel, Apple Silicon). Anything available on PyPI may be installed into a Conda environment using pip, and Conda will keep track of what it has installed and what pip has installed. Custom packages can be made using the conda build command, and can be shared with others by uploading them to Anaconda Cloud, PyPI or other repositories. The default installation of Anaconda2 includes Python 2.7 and Anaconda3 includes Python 3.7. However, it is possible to create new environments that include any version of Python packaged with Conda.

Anaconda Navigator

Anaconda Navigator is a desktop graphical user interface (GUI) included in Anaconda distribution that allows users to launch applications and manage Conda packages, environments and channels without using command-line commands. Navigator can search for packages on Anaconda Cloud or in a local Anaconda Repository, install them in an environment, run the packages and update them.https://www.anaconda.com/products/navigator It is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. The following applications are available by default in Navigator: * JupyterLab *

Jupyter Notebook Project Jupyter (pronounced "Jupiter") is a project to develop open-source software, open standards, and services for interactive computing across multiple programming languages. It was spun off from IPython in 2014 by Fernando Pérez and Bria ...

* QtConsole *

Spyder The SPYDER ("Surface-to-air Python and Derby") is an Israeli short and medium range mobile air defence system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with assistance from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Rafael is the prime contractor an ...

Glue Adhesive, also known as glue, cement, mucilage, or paste, is any non-metallic substance applied to one or both surfaces of two separate items that binds them together and resists their separation. The use of adhesives offers certain advantage ...

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

RStudio RStudio IDE (or RStudio) is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It's available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs ...

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

Conda

Conda is an open source,

, language-agnostic

and environment management system that installs, runs, and updates packages and their dependencies. It was created for Python programs, but it can package and distribute software for any language (e.g., R), including multi-language projects. The Conda package and environment manager is included in all versions of Anaconda, Miniconda, and Anaconda Repository.

Anaconda.org

Anaconda Cloud is a package management service by Anaconda where users can find, access, store and share public and private notebooks, environments, and Conda and PyPI packages. Cloud hosts useful Python packages, notebooks and environments for a wide variety of applications. Users do not need to log in or to have a Cloud account, to search for public packages, download and install them. Users can build new Conda packages using Conda-build and then use the Anaconda Client CLI to upload packages to Anaconda.org. Notebooks users can be aided with writing and debugging code with Anaconda's AI Assistant.

References

External links

*
Anaconda Cloud
{{Package management systems Package management systems Python (programming language) software