APD

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

One of the world's largest industrial gas makers, Air Products produces oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, and helium used in refineries, electronics, medicine, and food. Founder Leonard Parker Pool started it in Detroit in 1940 with a then-radical idea: build oxygen plants right at the customer's site instead of shipping heavy tanks, which is how the company got its name — turning free air into a suite of valuable "products." During World War II it made mobile oxygen generators for high-altitude military flights, and today it is behind massive clean-hydrogen projects like Saudi Arabia's NEOM.