Founded in 2015 with only 29 members, the RISC-V Foundation, a nonprofit organization, was chartered to standardize and promote the free and open
RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), along with its hardware and software ecosystem. Now called RISC-V International, it’s become a truly global organization with more than 2000 members in more than 70 countries.
The release of RISC-V to the open community in 2015 — for both standardization and ongoing improvement through open collaboration — marked the first time the hardware community embraced open-source standards and collaboration at this level. RISC-V combines a modular technical approach with an open license business model, meaning that anyone, anywhere can leverage the IP contributed and produced by
RISC-V International.