The story
Founded by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac in 1956.1
FICO was founded in 1956 as Fair, Isaac and Company by engineer William R. "Bill" Fair and mathematician Earl Judson Isaac. The two met while working at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. Selling its first credit scoring system two years after the company's creation, FICO pitched its system to fifty American lenders.
FICO went public in July 1987 and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The company debuted its first general-purpose FICO score in 1989. FICO scores are based on credit reports and "base" FICO scores range from 300 to 850, while industry-specific scores range from 250 to 900.
Lenders use the scores to gauge a potential borrower's creditworthiness.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac first began using FICO scores to help determine which American consumers qualified for mortgages bought and sold by the companies in 1995.
Name changes
Originally called Fair, Isaac and Company (hence the abbreviation FICO), this name was changed to Fair Isaac Corporation in 2003.
Headquarters moves
Originally based in San Rafael, California, FICO moved its headquarters to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2004, a few years after Minnesota resident Thomas Grudnowski took over as CEO.
In 2013, it moved its headquarters to San Jose, California, a year after CEO William Lansing joined.
In 2016, it opened an office in Bozeman, Montana, which later became its headquarters.
From Wikipedia’s article on FICO, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8