Hypercube, Inc. was incorporated in February of 1985 in Waterloo, Ontario. The company has origins associated with the University of Waterloo.
Its founder and current President and CEO is Neil S. Ostlund. Dr. Ostlund has held tenured academic faculty positions in the disciplines of chemistry and computer science at various universities. Most recently he was a faculty member and the director of the computer architecture lab in the computer science department of the University of Waterloo. In 1987, Dr. Ostlund left the University of Waterloo to work full-time for Hypercube, hiring its first full-time employees.
The first phase of Hypercube, Inc.'s existence involved contracting for Intel in association with Intel's development of the first commercial highly-parallel computer, the Intel iPSC hypercube computer. This is the origin of the company's name. Subsequent to this, Intel and Hypercube cooperated in the development and marketing of molecular modeling software for the commercial Intel iPSC.
The second phase of Hypercube, Inc's history involved the internal development of a turn-key molecular modeling "instrument" called a Chemputer consisting of a PC integrated with a parallel processing sub-system of Transputers running HyperChem, Release 1. A small number of these machines were built and sold to institutions such as NIH, University of California, and University of North Carolina.
The third phase of Hypercube, Inc.'s history involved a joint venture with Autodesk, Inc., initiated in 1990. Autodesk acquired an exclusive license to manufacture, market, and sell HyperChem with Hypercube doing all development and technical support for the products. The first Autodesk product, HyperChem Release 2, was shipped in March of 1992. Release 3 was shipped in April of 1993.
In January of 1994, Hypercube recovered its license from Autodesk and brought all control for HyperChem and related products in-house. Hypercube, Inc. has since shipped Releases 4, 4.5, 5, 6 and 7 of HyperChem, is currently shipping a new Release 8 of HyperChem, and has delivered other new products such as ChemPlus, HyperNMR, HyperChem Lite and Pocket HyperChem. The company is developing a range of new molecular modeling products for a range of platforms, although its dominant product remains HyperChem for Windows.
In the spring of 1997, Hypercube, Inc., made a major move into the US by opening a new office in Gainesville, Florida. The company purchased a 2.5-acre, 12,000 square foot site in downtown Gainesville as the location of its new office. The Gainesville office has become the principal business location for the company. Sales, marketing, and product support were all transferred to the US office.