Throughout 2026, Biamp is celebrating its 50th anniversary. With the launch of several new products and a new booth design, the excitement was clear at the ISE Show in Barcelona in February. The celebration continued in March with the 2026 Biamp Portland Jazz Festival, which the company has sponsored for a decade. “Our history is about music and still is,” said Rashid Skaf, President, CEO, and Co-Chairman, Biamp.
The Biamp history is now on permanent display in the newly opened Biamp History Museum located at its global headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. On April 23, 1976, Biamp was incorporated, and a ribbon-cutting and anniversary celebration was held on April 23, 2026, at the museum, showcasing 50 years of innovation from Biamp.
“We're a big employer here in Portland,” Skaf said. “One of our taglines is, ‘Born in Portland, Built for the World.’ I really love that kind of humble beginning on the planes in the Northwest, and now from here to Australia.”
Biamp has tripled in size since its 2017 acquisition by Highlander Partners and now employs nearly 800 worldwide, with nearly 400 in the Beaverton office.
Bigger, In Every Way
Skaf is thinking bigger in every way: bigger spaces, bigger environments, and the whole ecosystem. “We now have that in place,” he said.
“We do most of the courtrooms and corporations and education facilities in the world,” Skaf said. “With the history of ClearOne under our belt as well as companies like Community, Apart, HRT out of Italy, and Neets out of Denmark, we have a very global footprint.”
Skaf has a long history of acquiring companies. “The cool thing is that in my past life, I've had to buy four video companies in order to distribute content in classrooms and auditoriums. They would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to do this. This is all done digitally now.
Most people think of us as an audio company first. And certainly, we are. But as you look at what we're doing, it's audio through the Presenter Lift, it's video distribution through MAX Connect to 200 people at the same time, plus six displays,” Skaf explained. Previously, the wiring and the switching infrastructure needed would have been huge. “Ours is a little box that is all digital, and then of course, control in that same room,” he added.
“Now we're delivering audio, video, and control in bigger environments. So that's why we're talking about thinking bigger, it isn't just about the spaces, it's about thinking bigger about how Biamp works in this space. It's pretty exciting.”
“Workplace” is Where You Work
Traditionally, when we talk about “workplace,” it’s related to the enterprise, but Skaf thinks beyond that construct. “Your workplace may be a church, your workplace may be in an auditoria, or a class or school, and that is your workplace,” he said. “Biamp Workplace is a lifecycle management solution that can help you in those environments. We will work in those environments to ensure you have the same solution sets and the same tools and capabilities as if you were in the conference room.”
Skaf started his venue-based vision eight years ago, when he purchased Biamp as a foundation with DSPs. You can see it illustrated in Biamp City. “Biamp City has been my vision of what I want us to be focused on, and it is a simple concept that encapsulates that venue-based strategy."
“A meeting space, a meeting room, maybe called different things in different verticals, but it's a meeting space where people interact with each other. A classroom, a restaurant, a hotel room, or a hospital bedroom, or is also a side employee lounge, whatever you want to call it. If we're going to go into the classroom or we're going to go into the courtroom or into the stadium or into the restaurant, and we want to own that space,” Skaf added.
Since the 2017 acquisition, Biamp has acquired businesses and built product lines tailored to the needs of different venues. “We either build it or buy it,” Skaf said. “Using the same building blocks that we have now, it’s basically the same.”
Table Stakes, and Fish
Skaf likens the similarities of audio, video, control, and management to “restaurants, fish, chicken, meat, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. Those things can be done with an Italian restaurant, a French restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and so on.”
Through acquisitions and building products, Biamp gathered the basic ingredients. Skaf explained, “We brought them into overall solutions, which are our applications that go into venues, and those venues go into verticals. It has taken us eight years to get here, and I think that the next eight years will also take that same kind of trajectory by saying, ‘How do we refine these recipes? How do we go from a five-star restaurant to offering five-star menus at three-star prices in certain areas of our brand?
Ten-Year Journey
Skaf credits the launch of Biamp Workplace in 2024 with combining all of Biamp’s businesses. “It's different from a standpoint of growing a company organically, which takes a lot longer. When you grow as we have, which has been quick acquisitions, quick development, and quick understanding of our market segment. Now we're bringing it all together into these solutions with Workplace,” he said. “That is super exciting from a company perspective because what we've been able to do in the last five years has taken most companies 25 years to be able to grow into that segment. I'm proud of the team for being able to incorporate all those different segments together.
For Biamp, 2026 is about expanding its footprint into larger spaces. “We started in smaller spaces, and conferencing being a big part of that,” Skaf added. “But think bigger in ‘26 with bigger environments, bigger solutions, bigger capabilities than we've had before. And that will be the start of the next 10-year journey.” Biamp is not abandoning its capabilities in traditional spaces. “We are evolving in those spaces, and leapfrogging into new spaces that we may or may not have been in.”
Skaf keeps his eye on the prize, which he defines as “Innovation and satisfying our customers with solutions that are extraordinary.”
Always Grateful
At the end of our interview, I asked Skaf if he had anything to add. “I will say that the one thing that we're celebrating this year as well is our friends and partners around the world.
Biamp is the company it is today because of the partners and friends in the industry who've taken care of us. I knew that when we bought the company, we could build on that foundation, and it's been rock-solid ever since. I just want to thank you, and all the partners, whether they're our integrators, our consultants, our end users, and our friends in general in the industry.”
On a personal note. I have been chatting with and interviewing Rashid Skaf for more than 20 years. He shared a story that I feel speaks to the core of the person I have come to know. “My father is 85 years old, and this past October, he showed up every day at a trade show to support the team.” It’s clear that Skaf’s work ethic is inherited. This inspires me to look forward to the next 20 years.
