Charles Koch is an American businessman, Chairman, and CEO of Koch Industries, the largest conglomerate in the United States not listed in the stock market. The company is based in Wichita, Kansas, and operates in chemicals, refining, energy, pipelines, commodities trading, electronics, and software, among others. Koch owns 42% of the firm and he has an estimated net worth ranging from $46.4 billion to $62 billion as of March 2021.

Koch was born on November 1, 1935, in Wichita, Kansas. His parents were Fred Koch, who developed an innovative crude oil refining process in 1927 and founded the company in 1940, and Mary Koch, who was involved in the Kansas arts community and supported students to pursue a college education. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received a master's degree in chemical and nuclear engineering. When his father died in 1967, the company was inherited by Charles and his brothers David, William, and Frederick, and Charles became Chairman and CEO. David joined the firm in 1970, and later he became First Vice President. In 1983, Charles and David purchased the participation of William and Frederick in the company. With Charles as CEO, Koch Industries diversified its activities into other areas beyond petroleum. David, who died in August 2019, owned 42% of the firm.

Koch is also a financial supporter of libertarian and conservative initiatives, some of which he created, like the Cato Institute, the first libertarian think tank, co-founded by him in 1977. In 2003, he founded The Charles Koch Foundation, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice, economic opportunity, education, entrepreneurship, free speech, foreign policy, immigration, liberty, and technology. Besides, Charles is the author of two books, The Science of Success (2007) and Good Profit (2015).

Koch Industries consists of several subsidiaries, including Flint Hills Resources (chemicals, pipelines, refining), Georgia-Pacific (building materials, paper products), Guardian Industries (energy-efficient glass and fuel), Invista (carpeting, cleaning compounds, fibers, plastics), Molex (electronic solutions), Koch Ag & Energy Solutions (agronomic, energy, fertilizers, methanol), Koch Engineered Solutions (pollution control), Koch Disruptive Technology (venture capital), Koch Equity Development (investments), Koch Minerals (logistic for dry-bulk commodities, oil and gas exploration/production), Koch Supply & Trading (commodities trading, risk management products), and Matador (cattle breeding). The company has 130,000 employees in more than 70 countries, and it had revenue of $115 billion in 2019, a 4.5% more than the previous year.

Koch Industries reinvest 90% of its earnings into the firm, and from 2003 it has made investments for more than $80 billion. Since 2013, some of their acquisitions were Molex, a connectors and electronics components manufacturer, for $7.2 billion in 2013; PetroLogistics, a propylene producer, for $2.1 billion in 2014; Oplink, an optical communications components manufacturer, for $445 million in 2014; the Flint Group, a printing inks, printing chemicals, and digital printing machines producer, for $3 billion in 2014 (in association with Goldman Sachs); Truck-Lite, a lighting device for commercial vehicles producer, for an undisclosed amount in 2015 (in partnership with BDT and Penske); and Phillips-Medesize, a medical solutions provider, for an unrevealed figure in 2016.

The company also invested $240 million in American Greetings, a greetings cards producer, in 2013; $750 million to helps in taking ADT (alarm services provider) private in 2016; $800 million to contributes to making Solera Holdings (risk and management software) private in 2016; $230 million in Transaction Network Services (payment and financial services, telecommunications) in 2016; $100 in Neustar (real-time information provider) in 2017; $300 million in Global Medical Response (biggest provider of ambulatory services in the United States) in 2018; $650 million in Meredith (media conglomerate) in 2018; $550 million in Getty Images (visual content supplier and distributor) in 2019; and $350 million in MI Windows and Doors (vinyl and aluminum windows and doors manufacturer) in 2019.

In 2020, Koch purchased Infor for nearly $13 billion. Infor is a multinational enterprise software company focused on cloud computing. Previously, Koch had invested $2.5 billion in Infor in 2017, and from 2018 onwards acquired the remaining equity.

Some of Koch's investments are related to emerging and disruptive high-growth technologies. These are carried out through its subsidiary Koch Disruptive Technology and include the following companies: Desktop Metal (3D printing), D2IQ (cloud solutions), INSIGHTEC (incision-less surgery), Ibotta (payments app), Automox (cloud solutions), Vayyar (4D imaging), Outrider (autonomous yard operations), Trackonomy (logistics tracking), Beyond Identity (passwordless authentication platform), Sight (blood count analyzer that provides results in minutes), proteanTecs (software that applies analytics to data created by on-chip components and allows health monitoring), DeepCube (deep learning software accelerator), Alkira (cloud solutions), Strider (software that fights against intellectual property theft and supply chain vulnerabilities beyond the cyber domain), Percepto (robotics for autonomous inspection), Dragos (cybersecurity for industrial infrastructure), and Pliops (database acceleration).

In addition, Koch Industries owns 12,167,310 shares of the alarm services provider ADT (6.42 billion market capitalization), equal to $108,776,000; 4,918,615 shares of the consulting firm Vistra ($8.83 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $96,700,000; 4 million shares of the commercial mortgage lender Ladder Capital ($1.54 billion market capitalization), equal to $39,120,000; 1,625,000 shares of the media conglomerate Meredith ($1.5 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $35,189,000; and 109,305 shares of Formfactor ($3.49 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $4,702,000.

Sources: Britannica, Charles Koch Foundation, Charles Koch Foundation (2), FMK Foundation, Forbes, Forbes (2), Holdings Channel, Koch Disruptive Technology, Koch Equity Development, Koch Equity Development (2), Koch Industries, Koch Industries (2), Reuters, Tech Crunch

This article was updated on March 15, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

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