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Koch, Inc.
Koch Industries is a giant private conglomerate that makes money from everyday materials like paper towels, gasoline, fertilizer, and chemicals, plus a big financial and trading arm.
Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies in America, and most people touch its products without knowing it. If you've used a Brawny paper towel, bought gasoline that flowed through a Koch pipeline, or eaten food grown with fertilizer made by Koch, you've done business with Koch. The company is privately held and run from Wichita, Kansas, where the Koch family has controlled it for generations. It doesn't sell stock to the public, so you can't buy shares in it, and it doesn't have to report the way public companies do.
The business is spread across several big segments. Its chemicals and refining arm makes the raw ingredients for plastics, fibers, and fuels, and it runs refineries and pipelines that move oil and gas around the country. Its consumer brands include Brawny paper towels, Quilted Northern toilet paper, and Dixie cups, sold through Georgia-Pacific, a Koch subsidiary. It also owns a large fertilizer business, a big trading and investment arm called Koch Equity Development, and stakes in everything from glass to ranching. The through-line is that Koch likes boring, essential industries where scale and low costs win. How does a private giant afford all this? It reinvests its profits instead of paying dividends to outside shareholders, and it has a reputation for buying businesses when they're cheap and running them tightly. Koch Equity Development has put billions into deals, and the company has grown steadily by acquiring companies in industries it already understands. That strategy means Koch rarely chases hype; it buys cash-generating assets and holds them. Koch is also a lightning rod. The Koch family has spent heavily on politics and advocacy, which makes the company famous well beyond its factories. The brothers Charles and the late David Koch became household names for funding libertarian and conservative causes. That political profile doesn't change what Koch sells, but it does explain why a company most consumers never think about still shows up in the news.
The business is built on scale, private ownership, and patience, which lets Koch stay private and keep compounding without Wall Street breathing down its neck.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
The Koch family owns 84% of a company most Americans only know through its paper towels and gasoline
- 84% Koch family ownership
- 16% Other owners
Koch stays private, and the family keeps a tight grip: the Koch family holds 84% of the company. That ownership structure explains why you cannot buy Koch stock. The money instead flows through businesses selling fertilizer, fuels, building materials and chemicals, plus a trading arm, and the family decides where those profits go. Source: Baidu Baike, data from 2026
Timeline
Fred Koch Starts an Oil Firm
In 1940, Fred Koch started a small company in Kansas called Wood River Oil and Refining. It was mostly an engineering firm, with some oil and cattle ranching on the side. His big idea was a new way to refine crude oil: he could turn heavy oil into gasoline, which was valuable and hard to make. That clever process was the seed of everything that followed.
Charles Koch Takes the Chair
When Fred Koch died, his four sons inherited the company. His second son, Charles, stepped up as chairman and CEO. So from the start, the next generation had to figure out how to run a family business together — which, as it turned out, was easier said than done.
Renamed Koch Industries
A year after Fred's death, the company took his name. Wood River Oil and Refining became Koch Industries, a way of honoring the founder. The name has stuck ever since.
The Buyout of Two Brothers
Running a company with four brothers did not go smoothly. A bitter fight over dividends, fought in courtrooms and boardrooms, ended with Charles and David buying out the stakes of Bill and Frederick. That left Charles and David as majority owners, with firm family control and a simple habit: keep the profits and reinvest them in the business instead of paying them out. That habit would quietly shape everything the company did next.
Koch Buys Georgia-Pacific
For decades, Koch was an oil and industrial company. Then it bought Georgia-Pacific, one of the world's biggest timber, forest products and paper companies. It was a bold leap far beyond petroleum, and it showed Koch was willing to grow into markets that had nothing to do with its roots.
Koch Acquires Molex
Koch kept reaching into new territory. It bought Molex, a maker of electronic components, for $7.2 billion. The company was no longer just pipes and refineries; it was now inside the gadgets and machines that use electronics.
A Venture Arm Is Born
Koch set up Koch Disruptive Technologies, its own venture arm, led by Chase Koch. This was a new kind of move for an old industrial firm: instead of only buying established businesses, it would invest in young ones with big ideas.
Koch Goes All In on Software
Koch finished buying the rest of Infor, a major player in business cloud software. The deal capped more than $26 billion in technology investments over six years, and it sped up Koch's digital transformation. Infor became a standalone subsidiary, and just like that, an old oil and industrial company was a serious player in enterprise software.
A New Leadership Team
Koch announced a leadership shake-up. Charles Koch stayed chairman and shared the CEO role with Dave Robertson, while Jim Hannan became President and COO. It was a way to spread the top jobs as the company grew more complex.
Koch Rebrands Itself
After nearly 60 years, the company changed its name at the top: the holding company became Koch, Inc., with a new subsidiary called Koch Companies LLC. The reason was simple. As the company put it, it was no longer only an industrial company, but also a company involved in technology of all kinds. The name finally caught up with what Koch had become.