Category: 3. Business

 

There was a time when most cutting-edge industrial research was conducted at massive corporate R&D organizations like DuPont Central Research and Development and General Electric’s campus in Schenectady, New York. Such institutions went the way of the battleship and horse-drawn buggy. Big companies still do research, of course, but it tends to be honed more to meeting the immediate needs of their businesses than to making big breakthroughs.

Start-ups now take on many of the risks in innovation, and in C&EN’s latest 10 Start-Ups to Watch, which were revealed on Monday, we profile noteworthy new companies that may come up with the next big thing. The firms aim to make textile dyeing more sustainable, carbon capture more affordable, and cancer drugs more precise. Enjoy reading!

Questions? Comments? Tips? Let us know. Email Alex Tullo, C&EN’s senior correspondent for business, at a_tullo@acs.org.

Top stories from C&EN

• Despite a spate of recent deals, biotechnology financing is still slow as big pharma and venture capital firms continue to take a cautious approach to dealmaking.
• Arena BioWorks, cofounded in 2024 by Stuart Schreiber, also one of the founders of the interdisciplinary Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has shut down amid a poor financing and uncertain policy environment.
• Consumer products companies aren’t meeting the plastics sustainability commitments they made years ago, and plastics recyclers are suffering.

Business in brief

Ineos negotiates exit for China petrochemical venture

Ineos is in negotiations with its partner, the Chinese state-owned oil and chemical company Sinopec, to exit their petrochemical joint venture in Tianjin, China. Ineos bought into the partnership in 2023, when the complex was already under construction. According to Sinopec, it started up in 2024. The facility has a 1.2 million-metric-ton-per-year ethylene cracker and downstream polyethylene and other derivatives units. In a financial report, Ineos said that move was “due to continuing weak market conditions in China.” The joint venture, as well as another Ineos partnership with Sinopec, Shanghai Secco Petrochemical, lost money in the third quarter. When Ineos bought into Secco in 2022 it was supposed to be the start of a broader collaboration between the two firms.

—Alex Tullo

Oman explores green methanol hub

The government of Oman is working with a consortium of Spanish companies to develop a facility in the country to produce e-methanol—methanol made from renewable electricity and captured CO₂—and use it to fuel maritime vessels. Oman is located on the Arabian Sea near major shipping routes. Officials from Oman’s transportation ministry signed a set of agreements with Acciona & Nordex Green Hydrogen, the e-fuels developer HIF Global, and the regional investor Al Meera. The partners say the deals set up legal and business frameworks for the partners to select sites, share technology information, and start regulatory work to support a project in Oman’s Dhofar region.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Vianode to build graphite plant in Ontario

The battery anode materials maker Vianode has announced plans for a multibillion-dollar synthetic graphite plant in Ontario. The firm says the project will start with an initial investment of $1.425 billion and expand from there, aiming at a final capacity of 150,000 metric tons per year. That first phase will employ 300 people when it starts production as early as 2028, Vianode says, and the fully realized facility will have 1,000 jobs. The firm uses petroleum coke, a by-product of oil refining, as its raw material. The company opened its first commercial facility in Norway in 2024. Vianode says that in addition to electric vehicles it will target applications in semiconductors, nuclear reactors, and steel production.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Air Products looks to turn Louisiana blue hydrogen gray

The industrial gas firm Air Products and Chemicals is negotiating deals that would convert a planned low-carbon hydrogen project in Louisiana into a conventional hydrogen production site, CEO Eduardo Menezes told investors during the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call. The original plan was to make hydrogen from natural gas while capturing the resulting CO₂ emissions for geological sequestration. Menezes said Air Products is divesting the CO₂ capture and sequestration part of that, including the connected underground pore space it was developing. To the extent the firm does find customers willing to pay a premium to sign long-term contracts for decarbonized hydrogen and ammonia, it will contract with the buyer to provide carbon capture as a service, he said. Menezes also left the door open to canceling the project entirely and separately selling off the sequestration pore space.

—Craig Bettenhausen

BASF starts up units at big China complex

BASF has started manufacture of the first products at its new Verbund integrated chemical complex in Zhanjiang, China. The company, which owns and controls the site, started construction in 2020; BASF’s board approved the main elements of the complex, including an ethylene steam cracker, in 2022. BASF says that at a total cost of $10 billion, the project’s construction is coming in under budget.

—Alex Tullo

Quote of the week

LanzaTech gets cash to turn greenhouse gases into ethanol

The biobased chemical maker LanzaTech says the European Union’s Innovation Fund has awarded it a €40 million ($46.2 million) grant to help it build a plant in Norway that will turn smelter furnace gases into ethanol. The US firm says the project will produce up to 23,500 metric tons of the alcohol per year from carbon monoxide–rich gas generated in Eramet’s manganese smelter in Porsgrunn, Norway. Carbon dioxide created in the process will be liquefied and stored in geological formations under the North Sea. LanzaTech operates six similar facilities in China and Belgium, but it has long struggled to become profitable. An investor in LanzaTech, Carbon Direct Capital Management, offered to buy it at a discount in April, saying the sale might be the only thing that keeps the company from going bankrupt.

—Michael McCoy

Element Solutions to acquire electronic materials maker EFC

In its second deal announcement in as many weeks, Element Solutions has agreed to buy EFC Gases & Advanced Materials for about $360 million. EFC is a supplier of high-purity specialty gases for semiconductor and other applications that, according to Element, has grown at a compound annual rate of more than 15% since 2009. In July 2024, EFC announced plans to build a $210 million semiconductor chemical facility in McGregor, Texas. The purchase announcement follows an Element agreement to buy Celanese’s Micromax unit, a maker of inks and pastes used in electronics, for about $500 million. Element said at the time that the purchase would increase its sales to the electronics industry to about $2 billion per year.

—Michael McCoy

Evotec to sell French biologics plant to Sandoz for $350 million

The generic drug maker Sandoz has agreed to purchase a manufacturing facility from the German drug discovery firm Evotec Biologics for $350 million. The site, in Toulouse, France, has in-built technology for continuous manufacturing of biologics. The two companies partnered for the first time in 2023; that move allowed Sandoz to access Evotec’s artificial intelligence–driven, continuous manufacturing technology to develop biologics. It was around that time that Sandoz separated from Novartis to become an independent company. Meanwhile, the new deal could yield more money for Evotec, with royalties of over $650 million on up to 10 biosimilar molecules developed by Sandoz.

—Aayushi Pratap

Novo Nordisk loses to Pfizer in bid for Metsera

A bidding war for the weight-loss drug developer Metsera erupted in late October when Novo Nordisk made an unsolicited offer for the company—despite it already having signed a merger agreement with Pfizer. In response, Pfizer raised its bid and filed a suit accusing Novo and certain Metsera shareholders of anticompetitive conduct. Novo returned with a higher proposal, but Metsera ultimately chose Pfizer’s further revised offer, valued at up to $10 billion, saying that it carried lower regulatory and antitrust risk. Novo says it will not be making an increased offer. Pfizer has since initiated a second legal action claiming that Novo had no real intent to buy the company.

—Elizabeth Walsh

Azalea Therapeutics launches with $82 million for gene therapy

Azalea Therapeutics has launched with $82 million in series A funding and technology that it says can make in vivo precision genome editing possible. The start-up evolved out of a collaboration between Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna and University of California, San Francisco, professor Justin Eyquem. The firm says it can deliver CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing machinery directly into human T cells using a T-cell-tropic adeno-associated virus vector, thus removing the need to manufacture edited T cells for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in the lab.

—Max Barnhart

What we’re reading

• Fierce Biotech remembers all the biotechs lost in 2025 in its latest Biotech Graveyard: Fierce Biotech
• Doctors probe a link between chemicals and Parkinson’s disease: Wall Street Journal
• How The Line, the Saudi dream of a 100 km super city, is unraveling: Financial Times

The Trump administration has launched its most direct attempt yet to shut down the top US consumer watchdog, arguing the current funding mechanism behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unlawful.

Attorneys for the administration claimed in a court filing that the agency “anticipates exhausting its currently available funds in early 2026”, setting the stage for it to be dismantled.

The CFPB is legally barred from seeking additional funds from the Federal Reserve, its typical source of funding, the attorneys suggested.

Donald Trump’s officials have tried persistently to close the agency, attempting to fire the vast majority of its workforce. These efforts sparked months of legal wrangling.

The CFPB has returned more than $21bn to US consumers since it was set up, in the wake of the financial crisis, to shore up oversight of consumer financial firms.

The justice department’s office of legal counsel issued an opinion claiming the CFPB cannot draw money from the Fed currently, claiming the “combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System” refers to profits of the Fed, which has operated at a loss since 2022.

Several federal judges have previously rejected that argument used by companies attempting to dismiss lawsuits brought by the agency, reported Politico.

Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget director, said in October that he plans to shut down the agency, and that this would take up to three months.

The claim was criticized by Democrats, given previous contrary statements from the administration, and court decisions blocking the agency from being shut down.

“These comments are particularly concerning given that a federal court has specifically blocked you from illegally shutting down the agency,” wrote Senate banking committee Democrats in a letter to Vought. “Your continued attempts to shutter the CFPB are illegal, and American families stand to pay the price.”

Vought has already suspended most of the agency’s work, as the full DC circuit court of appeals is deciding whether to take the case as a lower court order blocked the firings of about 90% of the agency’s staff.

The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China’s cybersecurity agency accused the American government of orchestrating the theft about $13 billion worth of Bitcoin, representing China’s most recent attempt to attribute major cyberattacks to the US.

The theft of the 127,272 Bitcoin tokens from the LuBian Bitcoin mining pool that took place in December 2020 marks as one of the largest crypto heists in history. The hack, according to the Chinese National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, is likely a “state-level hacker operation” led by US, citing the quiet and delayed movement of the stolen Bitcoin fits a government-level action rather than a typical criminal behavior.

Delta Air Lines settled a lawsuit that alleged a flight attendant was fired in retaliation for supporting unionization and enduring “sexually assaultive touching” during training.

The flight attendant, Aryasp Nejat, said he was suspended without pay, then fired, for making two pro-union, anti-harassment posts on social media, and was told his sexual harassment allegation would be investigated, but that he never received a follow-up.

The lawsuit, filed in 2024, accused a Delta Air Lines flight attendant who performed uniform inspections on flight attendants during a graduation ceremony, Matthew Miller, of having “engaged in non-consensual, sexually assaultive touching of Nejat with Miller’s hands reaching inside Nejat’s pants close to his genitals and then moving to underneath Nejat’s vest and against Nejat’s chest”.

The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum. Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The settlement represents a step towards accountability and healing after a difficult period in my life, and I really hope that my experience helps highlight to the public, and to especially Delta flight attendants, the importance of having a union,” said Nejat, who works as a flight attendant for a different major airline. “I truly believe that Delta values its anti-union campaign over the legal rights of its flight attendants to organize a union and their legal right to make complaints of sexual harassment.”

Nejat said he planned to use the settlement to cover his law school costs.

Several labor unions including the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the Teamsters are working to unionize 29,000 flight attendants at Delta, currently the largest single-unit organizing campaign in the US.

Delta has strongly opposed the move. The airline has a union representing pilots at the carrier and one representing dispatchers, but not for attendants – unlike other major airlines, where most workers are predominantly union represented.

“One of the reasons that flight attendant unions were originally formed were to root out sexual harassment, assault or sexual exploitation in order to try to get workers to do what you want them to do, to keep them quiet,” said Sara Nelson, president of the AFA-CWA. “These were the original reasons that we organized over 80 years ago, and we first negotiated a seniority list and a due process in that contract that ensured that something like this, at a minimum, that Aryasp wouldn’t have faced the retaliation for the union support but would have had a due process here.”

A Delta Air Lines spokesperson said: “Delta has consistently maintained his claims are without merit and settled to avoid the expense and distraction of litigation. Delta remains committed to ensuring all employees are treated in line with Delta policy and the law.”

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The booming private credit sector is inspiring a rich lexicon of alarm. For some time, market watchers have described the alternative asset class — which has grown to around $3tn globally — as a “ticking time bomb.” Recent turbulence has added to the colourful language. After the collapse in September of US car-parts maker First Brands and auto-lender Tricolor Holdings, which had both taken loans from nonbank financial institutions, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warned that “when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.” Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, said last month the bankruptcies could be a “canary in the coal mine”.

Analysts are taking note. To extend the roach analogy, they are asking whether recent problems in private credit are isolated pests or signs of an infestation. For now, calm prevails. The tremors in the US auto industry are being blamed largely on company-specific factors. There is some comfort that, despite rapid growth, private credit still accounts for a small fraction of outstanding corporate debt in America. Lending is often channelled through funds with limited redemption risks and moderate leverage, according to Fitch Ratings. In the US, broader economic conditions — from falling interest rates to healthy corporate balance sheets — are also expected to provide support.

But even if the risks of an imminent systemic shock appear limited, recent warnings have at least drawn attention to several troubling trends that investors and supervisory bodies should watch closely.

First, the real economy’s exposure to private lending — though small — is rising. In the US, loans to non-depository financial institutions account for more than 10 per cent of total bank loans, almost three times the exposure a decade ago, according to Moody’s. A particular concern is insurers’ growing investments in the opaque asset class, which could leave policyholders exposed if things go wrong. Efforts by private lenders to ease access for retail investors widens vulnerabilities further, while increased involvement in data centre financing ties the market more closely to the artificial intelligence boom.

Second, questions about lending standards are mounting. As the Financial Times reported on Monday, the rise of smaller, specialist rating agencies has sparked fears that private capital groups are “shopping” for the most favourable credit scores. Others point to the growing use of “payments-in-kind” — which allow borrowers to defer interest payments — as evidence of mounting strain and weakening loan quality. Fraud suspicions connected to some of those “cockroach” incidents are evidence of poor underwriting standards, critics say.

Third, although the global economy has shown resilience, it remains fragile. As it is, some investors worry that narrow spreads in public credit markets fail to capture real default risks. The uncertainty surrounding US President Donald Trump’s policy agenda adds to the unease. His administration’s push for broader financial deregulation could fuel further risk-taking just as signs of froth in both equity and credit markets are becoming harder to ignore.

Today’s boom in private markets has its roots in the tighter regulation placed on banks following the global financial crisis. That has channelled more credit through the less transparent and less regulated shadow banking system. Private markets have since played an important role by raising competition with traditional lenders, extending credit to innovative businesses and widening investment opportunities. Banks are even calling for looser rules to counter their surge. But as more money floods into the sector, vigilance must also keep pace. Regulators need to push for greater transparency and better data sharing across jurisdictions to monitor lending standards and economic linkages. Investor scrutiny will be just as vital. Indeed, even if recent warnings seem overblown to some, the risks they highlight are real and growing.