LEGACY LEADERSHIP: Joe Kiani, who left Iran at the age of 9 when he only knew three words of English, believed in a new way to improve the accuracy of patient monitoring using what’s called adaptive signal processing. Founded company in his Aliso Viejo garage in 1989. Once called the Steve Jobs of medtech by Apple Inc. executives.
HQ: Irvine
OC SIGNIFICANCE: The company’s products became famous for reducing faulty oxygen-level readings in newborn babies, thereby helping reduce deaths and blindness. The devices, primarily sold to hospitals, leapt in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic because of their ability to remotely monitor patients. Put OC on the map by taking on the world’s third-most-valuable company, Apple, in a landmark patent infringement lawsuit that resulted in a temporary U.S. import ban on Apple Watches.
DEFINING MOMENT: Company went public in 2007 after raising $202M in an IPO. In 2022, Masimo expanded into the consumer heath market with its $1B acquisition of Sound United, a decision that was criticized by investors and led to Kiani being ousted in 2024 following a bitter proxy battle. Masimo’s $9.9B sale to Danaher, which closed in June, capped a turbulent period of leadership change and restructuring and marked the largest OC medtech deal in recent years.
BY THE NUMBERS: More than 200M patients are monitored annually using Masimo’s technologies. Its market cap at one point topped $14B. Prior to being acquired by Danaher, Masimo was the fifth-largest company in OC with a market cap of $8B and $2.09B in revenue. Currently employs about 9.5K globally and 780 in Irvine. Expected to generate $530M in EBITDA by 2027 under Danaher’s diagnostics segment.
QUOTABLE: “When I founded Masimo 34 years ago, I witnessed other companies take poorly performing pulse oximeters, ones that suffered from too many false alarms and missed true alarms, and simply focus on making them prettier, or smaller, or reducing their power consumption, without attempting to make the technology really work. We did.” —Joe Kiani
FUN FACT: Prior to becoming Masimo’s headquarters, the company’s Irvine campus served as the fictional headquarters of Stark Industries in the 2008 blockbuster “Iron Man.”
