The humble datasheet is where glamour goes to be assigned a part number. It is dense, necessary and frequently stranded inside a search experience that feels older than the component it describes. Somewhere else, an engineer is reading a tutorial. A marketer is trying to reach that engineer. A distributor is cleaning a catalog. A buyer is wondering whether the selected capacitor will still be available by the time a product reaches production.
EETech’s business is an attempt to make those people and moments less separate. The privately held company in Boise, Idaho, began in 2015 around digital communities for electrical engineers. Its best-known property, All About Circuits, mixes technical articles, textbooks, calculators, forums, news and projects. Control.com serves industrial automation. EEPower concentrates on power electronics. Maker Pro speaks to builders. The network also reaches German-speaking engineers through mikrocontroller.net and China through a partnership with 21ic.com.
That looks like a media portfolio, and it is. But it also gives EETech a view of the questions engineers ask before they specify a component. Over the past decade, the company has built a second business around that vantage point: research, audience intelligence, product data, specialized search, websites and ecommerce for the companies trying to sell into the same market.
01 / The useful adjacencyAttention is only the first component
Trade publishing usually sells access to an audience and stops near the lead form. EETech kept moving. In 2021, it launched an early client marketplace and B2B commerce platform. In 2022, it merged with Big Zeta, adding deeper ecommerce, digital-presence and software capabilities. The combined company could create the article that introduces a technology, the search that surfaces its parts, the product page that explains them and the storefront that takes the order.
That progression is less a pivot than a chain of adjacencies. An audience creates distribution. Repeated technical searches create clues about demand. Those clues can shape market research, content programs and advertising segments. Clean component data can improve search. Better search can improve conversion. The interesting asset is the loop.
The annual Engineering Insights Report shows how the loop can produce a sellable artifact without requiring a new audience. EETech has surveyed engineers for years about preferred distributors, approved-vendor lists, research habits and the pressures shaping design work. Its seventh edition drew more than 10,000 qualified responses, according to the company. A manufacturer can use that material to tune a product launch or understand a vertical; EETech can use the same institutional knowledge to design a campaign, an audience segment or a digital tool. Research is therefore both a product and a compass for the rest of the catalog.
“EETech is more than just a publisher, they are a partner.”Michelle Pepe · Microchip Technology
EETech says its network reaches 8.7 million monthly active users. Its media pages cite 21 million page views, 2.5 million registered members and 1.1 million newsletter subscribers. Those are company-reported figures, but their strategic meaning is straightforward. In a niche where a product decision can begin months before production, useful technical attention is valuable long before anyone clicks “buy.”
02 / The catalog problemWhy ordinary web software gets lost
Electronic components make a hostile catalog. A distributor may carry millions of stock-keeping units, each with attributes that matter differently by category: voltage, tolerance, package, temperature range, lifecycle status and compliance. Part numbers encode meaning, but not consistently. Inventory changes. Substitutions can alter a design. A generic search bar that is happy matching red shoes to “red” is not prepared for an engineer who needs the exact pin count and a qualified alternative.
EETech sells keyword and parametric search, product-information management, content systems, custom sites, ecommerce and multi-vendor marketplaces for that environment. Its engineering tools include Bloqq, an interactive block-diagram system; Part Builder for decoding complex manufacturer numbering schemes; Product Configurator for narrowing technical choices; and PDF Jot, which turns static datasheets into collaborative workspaces.
Its customers sit on both sides. Engineers, makers and procurement teams use content, forums, research tools and component search. Manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, contract manufacturers and OEMs pay for advertising, leads, studies, audience activation, site work, data services and commerce software. The company earns money through a mixture of media programs, custom services, research, SaaS subscriptions and procurement products rather than one clean subscription line.
A component maker can improve how products are found, commission research on engineering buyers, run a technical campaign and build a better product selector. A distributor can modernize search or launch a marketplace. An OEM can analyze a bill of materials, flag risky parts and seek alternatives.
03 / The 2025 dealsFrom reading about parts to buying them
Two acquisitions in 2025 made the direction hard to miss. In August, EETech bought Breadboard, an AI-assisted supply-chain platform founded in 2022. Breadboard analyzes bills of materials, flags components that are unavailable, overpriced or obsolete, suggests alternatives and helps automate requests for quotation and supplier negotiation. It moves EETech closer to the operational moment when an engineering choice meets price, inventory and time.
In October, EETech acquired Datasheets.com from SiliconExpert Technologies. The site is a large search engine for component datasheets and technical documentation. EETech said it planned to modernize search, add parametric capabilities and enable part comparison. Breadboard offers the sourcing workflow; Datasheets.com offers a familiar discovery door. The media network supplies reach and context around both.
“Our goal is to create a seamless and powerful experience for engineers from part research to design implementation.”Robbie Ward · Chief Strategy Officer, on Datasheets.com
The phrase “AI-powered” deserves the usual caution. Procurement depends on accurate, current data and accountable decisions, not a clever chat box. But the underlying job is well suited to automation: compare long bills of materials, detect exceptions, rank substitutes and move repetitive supplier communication along. EETech’s advantage is not merely adding a model. It is combining the model with electronics-specific catalogs, supplier relationships and a large professional audience.
04 / Position and pressureA specialist stack in a crowded market
Every layer has established alternatives. AspenCore and other trade publishers compete for engineering attention and advertising. Octopart, Supplyframe, SiliconExpert and distributor sites help people find and evaluate parts. General commerce, product-information and procurement vendors offer broader platforms. DigiKey and Mouser have formidable catalogs, logistics and engineer loyalty.
EETech’s answer is vertical integration with industry fluency. It can point to communities where engineers already learn, research based on their concerns, data organized for components and implementation teams that understand technical B2B. The company showcases partners and customers including Microchip, Nexperia, ROHM Semiconductor, Eaton and major distributors. It has also worked with Accuris on compliance intelligence, joined the Semiconductor Industry Association and supported Women in Electronics and WE United.
Accuris is a useful example of the partner route. The companies combined a broad parts database with EETech’s Vital Data Intelligence interface to examine bills of materials for substances and regulatory exposure. The resulting compliance product can help a manufacturer identify parts affected by rules such as RoHS or REACH before the issue becomes a redesign. It is an awkward, detail-heavy job, exactly the kind of work where domain data matters more than a handsome generic dashboard.
This breadth can become a weakness if the pieces feel like a collection of services rather than one product. Media buyers, ecommerce teams and procurement leaders have different budgets and expectations. Trust also needs careful handling: an engineering community is valuable because its information feels useful and credible, while the commercial business benefits from what that audience reveals. EETech lists integrity, accountability, customer focus and community as values, and says it aims to keep its media unbiased and data-driven. Maintaining that separation is not decorative governance. It protects the source of the flywheel.
05 / The company underneathBoise, with a global circuit diagram
EETech was founded by industry veterans including Adam LaBarbera and Rob Pengelly; Cody Miller became a co-founder of the combined group and serves as chairman. Martin Chatterton took over as chief executive in November 2023 after leading data services and digital presence. His earlier work at Arrow Electronics included SiliconExpert and AspenCore, experience that maps neatly onto EETech’s combination of data and media.
The company describes its culture as fast-paced, kind, team-oriented and growth-focused. Its history page includes the normal photographs of laptops and office life, plus a presentation delivered by someone in a horse costume. That is useful evidence of at least one thing: a company can organize 15 million SKUs without organizing every meeting around solemnity.
In early 2026, EETech introduced a refreshed brand and website that presents its holdings as one ecosystem. Chatterton wrote that the company had grown from a startup into a global team working with more than 400 customers. In May, it added iSuppli co-founder Lloyd Kaplan to an advisory board already stocked with distribution and marketing veterans.
The next test is execution. If EETech can connect its products without flattening the communities that made them possible, it may occupy a distinctive spot between publisher, data company, digital agency and procurement platform. The electronics aisle will remain messy. That is the point. Mess is where a specialist earns its margin.