Companies in Austin: the headquarters, the big employers and all 66,280 businesses

This page is for anyone who needs a working list of companies in Austin: job seekers sizing up employers, buyers looking for a local supplier or partner, analysts, and B2B sellers deciding where to spend their prospecting time. It starts with the headquarters everyone asks about, then the region's biggest employers, then the full business market from federal data, and ends with how to find, check and approach the companies that matter to you.

The biggest companies headquartered in Austin

These are the ten largest SEC-registered public companies whose latest annual report (Form 10-K) gives a principal executive office in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, ranked by the revenue reported in that filing. The full ranked list of 27 is on our largest companies in Austin page.

Two things to know before you reuse this list. First, the SEC's company database still gives Austin business addresses for Resideo Technologies and Digital Realty Trust, but their latest 10-Ks name Scottsdale, Arizona and Dallas as their principal executive offices, so they're not on it. Second, it leaves out private companies, which don't publish revenue, and subsidiaries of companies based elsewhere, such as Samsung Austin Semiconductor. For headcount detail on the top three, see the Dell, Tesla and Oracle employee pages.

Austin's largest employers

Revenue and headcount rank companies differently, and government is a big part of the second list. Opportunity Austin, the Greater Austin Chamber's economic development program, publishes the region's major employers by size band. Its top band, "Employing 6,000 & Over," has 15 names (page updated July 2026):

Opportunity Austin lists them alphabetically, without exact counts. Six are public employers and three are health systems, which is why a list of the biggest employers looks so different from a list of the biggest companies.

How many businesses are in Austin

The US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts every business location with paid employees. For the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area (CBSA 12420) in 2023:

That's 56,434 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 8,216 with 20 to 99 and 1,630 with 100 or more.

Travis County has 64.6% of the metro's establishments and 70.7% of its jobs. Williamson County, home to Dell in Round Rock, has 22.7% of the establishments.

What kinds of companies Austin has

The same 2023 data by sector shows a market built around professional and technical work. These are the largest sectors by establishment count, plus the three that say most about Austin's corporate base:

Average pay is our calculation: annual payroll divided by employees. The information sector, which includes software publishers and data processing, has 2.8% of establishments but 12.8% of payroll. NAICS 55 is the closest Census measure of headquarters: 354 corporate, subsidiary and regional managing offices. For deeper cuts, see the reports on Austin tech companies and Austin construction companies.

CBP counts establishments, not companies, so a bank with 30 branches counts 30 times. It leaves out the self-employed and businesses without employees, and employment is for the pay period including March 12, 2023.

Finding and checking Austin companies

Whether you're vetting a contractor or building a target list, these sources answer different questions:

To shortlist a supplier, check three things in order: that the legal entity exists and is in good standing (SOSDirect and the Comptroller), that it holds any license the work needs (TDLR or the relevant board), and that it has done comparable work for a company your size.

Prospecting Austin companies

Who decides depends on size. At the 56,434 establishments with fewer than 20 employees, the owner usually buys. From 20 to 99 employees, an operations or office manager runs most purchases, with the owner signing off on big ones. Above 100, purchases split by function, and at the 354 managing offices the decisions for many other sites are made centrally, often with procurement involved.

Austin's mix shapes the pitch: buyers in professional services and software expect a short, specific message, and many of the larger employers above are public bodies that buy through formal bids.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Live Oak IT (liveoakit.example), a managed IT provider in Round Rock, wants Williamson County firms with 20 to 99 employees.

• Metro establishments with 20 to 99 employees: 6,117 + 2,099 = 8,216.
• Williamson County has 22.7% of all establishments, so Live Oak estimates about 1,865 there.
• Retail stores, restaurants and job sites don't fit its office-based service, so it assumes 45% do: about 840 accounts.
• Working 200 a quarter at a 2% win rate gives about four new clients a quarter.

Narrowing 1,865 sites to the 840 that run offices is the slow part. Bebop can search for "Williamson County professional services firms with 20 to 99 employees that opened a second office in the last year" and explain why each match fits.

Subject: IT for [Company]'s new office

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on the new [Cedar Park / Georgetown] office. Getting a second site onto the same network, phones and security setup is usually the part that eats a month.

We look after IT for 40 Williamson County firms between 20 and 100 people, on one flat monthly fee. Would a 20-minute walk-through of how we handled a two-office setup for a similar firm be useful?

[Your name], Live Oak IT

Next step: turn these numbers into a target list with how to build a prospect list.