Who Owns Linksys, The Router Brand Cisco Sold Off?

Linksys is a widely recognized networking and router brand that has operated in this space for decades. It started in 1988 as a private, California-based company under the name DEW International. However, it's no longer an independent company. Unlike some of its major competitors, like Asus or Netgear, both of which are independent, publicly traded companies, or TP-Link, an entirely privately owned entity under nobody else's umbrella, Linksys is currently a subsidiary of Fortinet, an American cybersecurity company.

Before reaching Fortinet, Linksys actually had several owners. After Linksys founders Victor Tsao and Janie Tsao ran it as a private company for 15 years, Cisco bought it in 2003 and held it for a full decade before selling it to the smartphone accessory brand Belkin in 2013. Belkin was sold to Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT) in 2018, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as Foxconn. This made FIT Linksys's new owner.

While Linksys was still under FIT's umbrella, Fortinet invested $75 million in March 2021, making it a 32.6% owner of the router brand. In the same year, Fortinet made another $85 million investment in the cfoompany, increasing its ownership stake to 50.8%. The cybersecurity company bought the remaining equity stake in Linksys in 2025 for $20.8 million, making it a 100% owner.

Linksys is one of the major Wi-Fi router brands right now, but it didn't release its first router until 2000, 12 years after it was established. The company's early products included printer-sharing boxes called Multishares, data switches, Ethernet hubs, and network kits. The arrival and growing popularity of home internet led Linksys to enter the router market. It released its first broadband router, the EtherFast BEFSR41, designed to make it easy for home customers to share a single home internet connection with multiple devices, and it was a big success.

The company's first Wi-Fi router was the WRT54G, released in December 2002. The WRT54G became massively popular in the U.S. It also started the aftermarket router-firmware revolution. As the WRT54G's router software was based on open-source Linux code, Linksys, which had already been sold off to Cisco by then, was forced to release its source code. This led a community of tinkerers to develop their own firmware for the router and enhance its functionality, giving it legendary status in the world of Wi-Fi routers.

Although it has changed hands multiple times, Linksys still offers Wi-Fi routers. However, its product portfolio has shrunk quite a bit, and according to the company website, in 2026 it seems to offer only products for internet service providers (ISPs) and mesh Wi-Fi systems for home consumers. However, you can still find the company's regular standalone Wi-Fi router and unmanaged Ethernet switches at retailers like Amazon.