Pharo
Pharo is a non-profit open-source project maintaining the Pharo programming language, a pure object-oriented Smalltalk dialect with a live, immersive development environment released under MIT License. It serves developers, researchers, and enterprises through Consortium memberships, Association donations, and academic grants.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded-
- HeadquartersLille, France
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Pharo does
Pharo is a non-profit, community-led open-source project maintaining the Pharo programming language — a minimalist, pure object-oriented Smalltalk dialect — and its accompanying live, immersive development environment. The platform combines an integrated IDE, a self-modifying compiler, a virtual machine bootstrapped largely in Pharo itself via VMMaker, an advanced debugger capable of restarting execution and creating methods at runtime, image-based persistence, full reflection, metaclass/trait composition, Git integration through Iceberg, and a Foreign Function Interface for C libraries. Major releases (Pharo 10 through 13.1) have shipped on roughly annual cadence from April 2022 through June 2025, with the next-generation Pharo 14 — featuring the v12 VM with RISC-V JIT support, an SDL3 migration, the Bloc graphics engine, and the Toplo widget set — actively in development as of June 2026.
The project's go-to-market is community-led rather than commercial. Pharo is distributed free of charge under the MIT License through self-serve channels: pharo.org downloads, the Pharo Launcher desktop client, Open Build Service packages for Linux distributions, zeroconf CI/CD scripts, and the GitHub repository. No commercial licensing fees exist. Revenue, where it exists, flows through the Pharo Consortium — industrial and academic members such as ZWEIDENKER, ENSTA Bretagne, Gemtalk Systems, InfOil, qqDataFruits, and roughly twenty academic institutions — and the Pharo Association, a French Loi de 1901 non-profit collecting individual contributions. Supplementary funding comes from grants (notably the Fondation Université de Lille 2024 call) and Google Summer of Code stipends; the consortium has been a GSoC mentor organization in 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2025, and 2026.
Pharo serves three primary user segments: professional software developers and enterprises building production applications (logos include Boeing's Everett factory ticketing system, Thales defense UX prototyping, Lam Research semiconductor equipment control, CSOB and KBC mobile financial apps, Mercap Abbaco bond analytics, Alliance Reservation Network's hotel booking engine, FINWorks, and ApptiveGrid); academic researchers and educators (over 200 papers on the HAL Pharo collection, a free MOOC with 3,000+ registered users, Pharo Days conferences, the isLoop free summer school, and six years of GSoC participation); and students and newcomers onboarded through MOOCs and summer schools. The platform has no VC or PE funding and is governed by a six-member board, with core development led by the RMoD team at Inria Lille alongside an international contributor base of 70–100+ developers per release.
Pharo firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Pharo
- Legal name
- Pharo
- Website
- https://pharo.org
- Company type
- Private
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Pharo is a non-profit open-source project maintaining the Pharo programming language, a pure object-oriented Smalltalk dialect with a live, immersive development environment released under MIT License. It serves developers, researchers, and enterprises through Consortium memberships, Association donations, and academic grants.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Pharo industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Object-Oriented Programming Language
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (5132)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Developer Experience Platforms for Enterprise (IDEs, CI/CD, Dev Portals) (HDAEAKAI)
Keywords
Where Pharo is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Lille
- HQ country
- France
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Pharo business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Open-Source Free Distribution: Pharo is fully open-source under MIT License and freely downloadable. Revenue is not generated directly from software licensing. The platform is sustained by the Pharo Consortium (industrial and academic members who pay membership fees) and the Pharo Association (individual supporters/contributors).
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Free Open-Source Platform |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels6 records
Marketing channels11 records
Pharo product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language (a Smalltalk dialect) and a powerful, immersive live development environment combining an IDE, compiler, virtual machine, debugger, and extensive library ecosystem. It is released as open-source under the MIT License and emphasizes immediate feedback, full reflection, image-based persistence, and moldable tools for productive software development.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Pharo Launcher: A tool for managing Pharo images and virtual machines, allowing easy download and switching between versions
- Spec
- Iceberg
- Roassal
Products and services
- Pharo Consortium Membership
Quantifiable outcome
- Pharo 13 release involved 698 Pull Requests integrated
- +9 more outcomes
Companies that use Pharo
Customer profileNamed customers40 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Pharo technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration3 records
Feature16 records
Pharo partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Eleven partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.
- GooglecorePharo Consortium accepted as Google Summer of Code mentor organization for 2026. GSoC enables students to contribute to Pharo open-source development with Google funding and mentorship.
- BoD (Books on Demand)minorBooks on Demand (BoD) serves as publisher for Pharo books including 'Application Building with Spec 2.0' and 'Testing in Pharo'. Available alongside Amazon and direct PDF downloads.
- InriacoreInstitut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (French National Institute for Computer Science). Primary research institution hosting Pharo development (RMoD team in Lille). Provides essential support for Pharo infrastructure and core development.
- CNRScoreFrench National Centre for Scientific Research. Major research institution providing support for Pharo's academic development and research ecosystem.
- RMODcoreRMoD (Retro-Engineering, Modelling and Design) team at Inria Lille. Primary development team for Pharo language and environment.
- Pharo ConsortiumcoreUmbrella organization allowing companies and institutions to support Pharo development. Has industrial and academic members. Provides professional support to members. Website: consortium.pharo.org.
- Pharo AssociationcoreFrench Loi de 1901 non-profit organization allowing individuals to support Pharo. Provides Ephemeric Cloud access to members, organizes events, and collects funds for development.
- ESUG (European Smalltalk User Group)minorEuropean Smalltalk User Group organizes annual conferences (ESUG Innovation Technology Awards) where Pharo projects and community members are regularly recognized and present.
- Pharo Consortium - Academic MemberscoreMultiple academic institutions as Pharo Consortium members supporting the platform. Includes CIRAD, EMIT University Fianarantsoa, LIENSs La Rochelle, Lviv University Faculty of Applied Mathematics, DGtal Aqua Lab, ISCLab Chile, LIFIA Argentina, USTH Hanoi, Université de Maroua, DISP Lab, Ryerson University, ÉTS Montréal, Tecnológico de Monterrey, University of Yaoundé 1, Software Quality Laboratory Novi Sad, ENSTA Bretagne, and JPL/NASA.
- Pharo Consortium - Industrial MemberscoreCorporate members supporting Pharo through consortium: InfOil (Gold - Oil and Gas software), qqDataFruits S.R.L (Gold - data analytics), ApptiveGrid GmbH (Bronze - SaaS), ZWEIDENKER (Platinum - web applications), ENSTA Bretagne (Platinum), Gemtalk Systems (Gold), Object Profile (Bronze - tools), Palantir Solutions (Bronze), Spesenfuchs (Bronze - travel expenses), and Object Guild (Bronze).
- UdL / CristalminorUniversité de Lille and Cristal research laboratory providing additional institutional support for Pharo development.
Scale indicators13 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Pharo competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- GemTalk Systems: Provider of GemStone/S, a Smalltalk-based scalable application server. Gold Member of the Pharo Consortium that interoperates with Pharo for production deployments (e.g., Quuve, YesPlan). Closely coupled with the Pharo ecosystem.
- Object Profile: Builds commercial code engineering tools for VisualWorks and Pharo developers, including the Roassal visualization engine. Operates in the same Smalltalk tooling space and is a Bronze Member of the Pharo Consortium.
- Instantiations: Commercial Smalltalk vendor offering VA Smalltalk. Direct competitor to Pharo in the Smalltalk market, serving enterprise customers with proprietary Smalltalk tooling and runtime.
- Cincom Smalltalk: Cincom's commercial Smalltalk implementation (VisualWorks and ObjectStudio) is the most established commercial counterpart to Pharo. It competes for the same Smalltalk developer audience, supporting enterprise customers with long-lived Smalltalk deployments.
- Smalltalk/X: Smalltalk/X is an independently developed Smalltalk implementation for commercial and research use. Comparable to Pharo as an alternative Smalltalk platform with its own VM and IDE.
- Dolphin Smalltalk: Dolphin Smalltalk is a Windows-focused Smalltalk development environment. While historical, it represents the same niche of Smalltalk IDE vendors competing for the same developer community.
Others
- Apache Software Foundation: Open-source foundation supporting numerous software projects under a merit-based, community-driven model. Thematically adjacent to Pharo's open-source governance approach, though with a much broader project portfolio.
- Eclipse Foundation: Stewards open-source development tooling (JDT, Eclipse IDE). Adjacent as a foundation supporting open-source IDE ecosystems and member-driven governance, though focused on JVM languages rather than Smalltalk.
Broad incumbents
- Canonical: Canonical (Ubuntu) operates a similar open-source community governance model with commercial support and memberships. Comparable as a broad open-source platform steward with a different language/runtime focus.
- Red Hat: Red Hat sponsors and commercializes open-source projects (Linux, OpenShift) with a consortium/membership model comparable to Pharo Consortium governance. Broader scope but analogous open-source consortium economics.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Pharo social profiles
Digital presencePharo financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Pharo leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Pharo funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Pharo M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Pharo
What does Pharo do?
Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language (a Smalltalk dialect) and a powerful, immersive live development environment combining an IDE, compiler, virtual machine, debugger, and extensive library ecosystem. It is released as open-source under the MIT License and emphasizes immediate feedback, full reflection, image-based persistence, and moldable tools for productive software development.
Is Pharo a public or private company?
Pharo is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Pharo founded?
Pharo was founded in -1. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Pharo based?
Pharo is headquartered in Lille, France, in the Europe region.
How does Pharo make money?
One revenue line is on record: open-Source Free Distribution.
Who are Pharo's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are GemTalk Systems, Object Profile, Instantiations, Cincom Smalltalk, Smalltalk/X and Dolphin Smalltalk. Others are Apache Software Foundation and Eclipse Foundation. Broad incumbents are Canonical and Red Hat.
Does Pharo have an API?
No public API is recorded for Pharo.
What industry is Pharo in?
Pharo's product category is Object-Oriented Programming Language. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEAKAI, Developer Experience Platforms for Enterprise (IDEs, CI/CD, Dev Portals). Its NAICS code is 5132 and its SIC code is 7372.