Thriving on Change

If there’s one constant in business — it’s change. In fact, with increased digitization, the pace of change will never be as slow as it is today. Across industries, this fast, technology-based evolution is building the fourth industrial revolution and in order to keep up, companies must reimagine their business models in order to adapt.

At GE Ventures we embrace change.  We realize it is often the catalyst for big innovations and at our core, we are innovators.  When we started GE Ventures in 2013, we saw a golden opportunity to unite the fast-moving world of startups with GE’s deep industrial knowledge that benefits both sides.  We created a multi-modal business model that has evolved over the years to enable venture capital funding, licensing, business creation, and new market development — all with an eye toward creating solutions and building companies that will drive growth, transform industries and impact lives.

Since our start, we’ve invested in over 100 companies with many successful exits that offered healthy returns and we’ve started nine new companies which are all thriving today, either independently or under GE business units which have expanded their capabilities. We’ve also commercialized GE’s IP through technology partnerships and consortiums, and by working closely with key thought leaders and entrepreneurial scientists to catalyze new markets.

But most importantly, we’ve identified new growth pathways for GE’s business units. We partnered with them to prepare for this new future by accessing the entrepreneurial ecosystem to provide options for their future growth. In addition to innovating from within, they are building partnerships with the most forward-looking entrepreneurs in their industries to accelerate growth and innovation.

A good example of this is Avitas Systems, a company created within GE Ventures to transform inspection services. Through relationships with GE customers, we saw a clear problem: oil and gas companies can spend as much as $1 billion per year on inspections that are usually done manually. These can be incredibly time-consuming and are often dangerous for inspectors who may have to climb to the top of a flare stack or dive to great depths to examine underwater pipelines.

So, we built Avitas Systems which uses drones, robotic crawlers and other unmanned vehicles with infrared cameras and an assortment of sensors to gather data, making inspections safer, easier and faster.  The sensors feed the data to our predictive algorithms and AI to optimize inspection and maintenance schedules, saving companies time, money and increasing safety for inspectors.  One major oil and gas company we work with reported reducing inspection times nearly 10x with zero safety incidents and zero downtime.  

Another example of how we build companies to support GE’s business units is AiRXOS, a new company that is establishing aerial highways for drone operators. Drones will be a crucial part of the future of autonomy, and AiRXOS is helping manned and unmanned vehicles to safely co-exist. Recently, it was awarded the first BVLOS FAA waiver.

Then there are those 100+ impressive startups we’ve invested in, such as Catalant, which offers a technology platform to enable companies to get mission-critical work done faster by identifying internal and external subject matter experts, onboarding and deploying them quickly. And Neuronetics (NASDAQ: STIM), which is the market leader in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) noninvasive neuromodulation therapy for patients with treatment-resistant depression, and other psychiatric and neurologic disorders. 

By focusing on adjacent and transformational plays, we enable our business units to see around corners, detecting emerging innovation signals in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and translating them into opportunity.

During this time of transformation for GE, GE Ventures will continue to create value for our business units, employees and shareholders. And, we remain strongly committed to our portfolio companies and the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As we embrace the future, we know it will involve change and at GE Ventures, that’s something we are well-equipped to handle.  We’re excited to move boldly into a new era.