The last few years have seen quite a few changes in the AFM industry with some companies disappearing, and some others being acquired. presumably some caused by the financial crisis, which has certainly affected instrument spending.

Nanotec, a small Spanish company ceased trading in 2015. Nanotec were well-known for also producing their analysis software WSxM, which in addition to running their instruments, also opened almost all AFM image formats, and had a lot of great analysis features. Fortunately, WSxM is still available.

Keysight was a spin off of Agilent, and hosted the AFM division for a few years. unfortunately, they no longer make AFMs. Agilent had bought the IP of Molecular Imaging, which was one of the "big three" at one point. Agilent did continue to develop MI instruments for a number of years. Agilent had also bought the IP of Pacific Nanotechnology, but never did anything with it.

The biggest recent change is probably that Bruker bought JPK. JPK were early leaders in successful biological AFMs, and sold particularly well in Europe. As of now, Bruker are offering some of JPK's products and www.jpk.com still exists. I kind of hope this continues as their Nanowizard AFMs are good products. Bruker also bought Anasys instruments, which make Nano-infrared microscopes, and are now offered under the Bruker brand.

Asylum Research was acquired by Oxford Instruments, and are still trading under the name Asylum Research - An Oxford Instruments company.

Of course, in addition, a few smaller companies came and went as usual! All these changes are reflected in the page "Where to Buy - AFM Instruments", linked below.

 link to instruments page

I also link below to an interesting Post on LinkedIn from Paul West on the history of the AFM business, for those who are interested!

Post about AFM Industry history