Association for Computing Machinery

What Association for Computing Machinery does

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), founded in 1947 and headquartered in New York, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, operating as a private nonprofit professional membership organization incorporated in Delaware. ACM serves more than 100,000 members globally — with more than half residing outside the United States — spanning computing educators, researchers, students, and industry professionals across 500+ colleges and universities and 14+ countries.

ACM's core product is the ACM Digital Library (dl.acm.org), a comprehensive bibliographic and full-text repository containing over 600,000 articles authored by leading computing researchers, supplemented by peer-reviewed journals (ACM Transactions series), conference proceedings from 170+ annual events, books, and flagship publications including Communications of the ACM (CACM) and ACM Queue. The organization supports 38 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) addressing discrete computing sub-disciplines, 860+ professional and student chapters worldwide, and Regional Councils in Europe, India, and China. As of January 2026, ACM transitioned all its publications to a full Open Access model, and in March 2026 it added AI-generated paper summaries through a partnership with SciSummary. Prestigious awards including the A.M. Turing Award (a $1 million Google-funded prize recognized as the "Nobel Prize of Computing") anchor ACM's brand authority.

ACM generates revenue primarily through recurring membership dues (professional and student tiers), institutional and individual subscriptions to the ACM Digital Library, conference registration and proceedings sales, publication sales, and flagship corporate sponsorships from Google and Infosys. Member benefits are delivered through the myACM portal and the ACM Learning Center, which offers 80,000+ online books, courses, and videos via the Skills Bundle Add-On. The organization is volunteer-led and member-governed, with an elected Council, Executive Committee, and an incoming leadership team (effective July 2026) headed by President Elisa Bertino.

Name

Association for Computing Machinery

Legal name

Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

Website

https://acm.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1947

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

ACM is a global nonprofit computing society serving 100,000+ members through the ACM Digital Library (600,000+ articles), 170+ annual conferences, 38 Special Interest Groups, and 860+ chapters worldwide, with revenue from membership dues, institutional subscriptions, and events.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Membership Dues: ACM generates revenue through annual membership dues from its 100,000+ professional and student members worldwide. Membership includes access to publications, Digital Library, conferences, and networking benefits.
2. Digital Library Subscriptions: Revenue from institutional and individual subscriptions to the ACM Digital Library, which provides access to over 600,000 full-text articles and comprehensive bibliographic resources.
3. Conference Proceedings and Events: ACM hosts more than 170 annual conferences, workshops, and symposia. Revenue is generated through conference registrations, proceedings sales, and related event activities.
4. Publications and Books: Revenue from publishing journals, magazines, books, and conference proceedings. ACM transitioned to full open access publishing model as of January 2026.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a nonprofit learned society that delivers computing publications, the ACM Digital Library (600,000+ full-text articles), professional membership, and a global program of 170+ annual conferences and symposia. It also confers premier awards including the A.M. Turing Award, operates 38 Special Interest Groups and 860+ chapters, and transitioned to full open access publishing effective January 2026.

Product overview

ACM is a professional computing society offering a comprehensive portfolio of products and services centered around its core mission of advancing computing as a science and profession. The organization operates a platform-plus-modules architecture consisting of the ACM Digital Library as the flagship resource, complemented by peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, books, and magazines (including flagship Communications of the ACM and ACM Queue). Additional offerings include the ACM Learning Center with TechTalks, ByteCast podcasts, and E-Learning collections, all accessible through ACM Membership. The organization also supports 38 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and 860+ chapters worldwide, delivers prestigious awards including the Turing Award, and provides member services through the myACM portal. As of January 2026, ACM transitioned to a full open access publishing model for all its publications.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ACM Digital Library: The most comprehensive collection of full-text articles and bibliographic records covering computing and information technology, including more than 600,000 full-text articles.
• Communications of the ACM (CACM)
• ACM Queue
• ACM TechTalks
• ACM ByteCast
• ACM Learning Center
• ACM A.M. Turing Award
• ACM-W
• ACM RISKS Forum

Products and services

• ACM Digital Library The most comprehensive collection of full-text articles and bibliographic records covering computing and information technology, including over 600,000 full-text articles authored by leading researchers. Available via institutional and individual subscription.
• ACM Membership Professional and student membership offering access to the ACM Digital Library, publications, conferences, career resources, and networking opportunities for computing professionals worldwide.
• ACM Journals Peer-reviewed academic journals spanning all areas of computing, among the most respected and highly cited in the field.
• ACM Conference Proceedings Proceedings from more than 170 annual conferences, workshops, and symposia, representing premier global events in computing.
• ACM Books Books published by ACM covering computing and information technology topics from leading researchers and practitioners.
• Communications of the ACM (CACM) The leading online and print publication for the computing and information technology fields, providing industry news, commentary, observations, and practical research.
• ACM Queue ACM's magazine for practicing software engineers covering topics such as memory safety, software engineering best practices, and technical innovations.
• ACM Learning Center Lifelong learning platform offering E-Learning collections with access to over 80,000 online books, courses, and videos from top content publishers, including Skillsoft content. Available as ACM Skills Bundle add-on.

Quantifiable outcome

• Open access to all ACM publications as of January 2026
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability2 records

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered strategic and infrastructure.

• SciSummarystrategicTechnology or Integration · 29 March 2026ACM selected SciSummary to power AI-generated summaries across its collection of over 300,000 academic papers. This partnership enables researchers to use the same AI engine to quickly identify relevant research without reading full papers. The collaboration represents a strategic push to enhance accessibility and efficiency within academic research workflows.
• CloudflareinfrastructureTechnology or IntegrationCloudflare provides services including load-balancing, deliverance of website content, and serving DNS connection for the ACM website operator.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• IEEE Computer Society: IEEE Computer Society is the most direct peer to ACM — both are large global professional computing organizations with memberships in the six figures, premier journals and conferences, prestigious awards, and overlapping communities of computing researchers and practitioners. They compete for the same authors, conference attendees, and institutional subscribers.
• Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI): AAAI is a closely comparable professional society focused specifically on AI research, with a membership model, peer-reviewed conference (AAAI Conference), and awards analogous to ACM. AAAI is a direct peer for ACM's SIGAI community and competes for AI researchers and conference participation.
• USENIX Association: USENIX is a nonprofit professional computing association focused on systems, security, and open source. It operates a similar model of conferences (e.g., OSDI, USENIX Security, NSDI) and a member community that overlaps with ACM's SIGOPS, SIGSAC, and other systems-oriented SIGs.
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM): SIAM is a peer nonprofit professional society serving applied mathematics and computational science researchers. It has a comparable model — peer-reviewed journals, conferences, members, and recognition programs — and serves communities (e.g., computational science, data mining) that overlap with several ACM SIGs.

Regional players

• British Computer Society (BCS): BCS is the chartered professional body for computing in the UK, comparable in mission and structure to ACM but with a primarily UK focus. It offers membership, publications, conferences, and professional registration analogous to ACM, making it a strong regional peer.

Broad incumbents

• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): AAAS is a much larger and broader nonprofit scientific society (publisher of Science magazine). It shares ACM's nonprofit society structure, membership model, and prestige program (AAAS Fellows), but operates across all of science rather than specializing in computing.
• Elsevier: Elsevier is a major global scientific, technical, and medical publisher whose journals (e.g., Computer Science Review) compete with ACM journals for author submissions and library subscriptions. It is a broad incumbent in scholarly publishing relevant to ACM's journal and conference proceedings business.
• Springer Nature: Springer Nature is a large international academic publisher with a significant computing and computer science portfolio (including the Nature portfolio and Springer CS books/journals). It competes with ACM for high-quality computer science submissions and institutional library spending, and represents the incumbent paid-publication model.

Emerging players

• arXiv (Cornell University): arXiv is a free open-access preprint repository widely used by computing researchers, including those publishing in ACM venues. It represents the open access dissemination model that ACM's January 2026 transition responds to, and competes with ACM Digital Library as a discovery and access channel.
• OpenReview: OpenReview is an open access peer review and publishing platform used by major ML/AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR). It is a partial substitute for ACM's conference review and proceedings infrastructure in the AI sub-community, and a direct competitor in the open access review and publishing model.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks4 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/theofficialacm
• YouTubeyoutube.com/user/TheOfficialACM
• Facebookfacebook.com/AssociationForComputingMachinery
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/association-for-computing-machinery
• Instagraminstagram.com/theofficialacm

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles15 records

Subsidiaries5 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Association for Computing Machinery