Tableau Software wants businesses to be able to better see and understand their data. The company develops business intelligence software designed to retrieve large volumes of data and quickly generate interactive dashboards, reports, and other data visualization tools with products like Tableau Desktop, Tableau Public, and Tableau Server. It serves more than 26,000 businesses across various industries, including Du Pont, Sears, and Deere & Company. Tableau was founded in 1996 by CEO Christian Chabot and chief development officer Chris Stolte. It started as a research project at Stanford University funded by the US Department of Defense. In mid-2013 Tableau became a public company.