Battelle's Spinoffs Take Flight
In less than two years, Battelle spun out a biotech firm that has created 125 Central Ohio jobs and a startup that’s deploying a portable system to destroy a ubiquitous “forever” pollutant.
Because the Columbus nonprofit research giant hasn’t had huge wins since helping form Xerox Corp. in the 1950s and a fiber-optic business that was acquired for $1.8 billion in 2000, it took care to set up Central Ohio’s AmplifyBio LLC and Revive Environmental Technology LLC for success out of the gate.
It’s just getting started. Battelle anticipates spinning out a company about every other year that tackles a tough, potentially life-changing problem, said CEO Lou Von Thaer.
“I’m always looking for gaps in the marketplace and places for Battelle to fill those gaps,” Von Thaer said in an interview. “We’ve always got four or five of these up our sleeves. If any of them actually work in the coming years ... they will matter to the world.”
Von Thaer has rich hunting grounds for those gap-fillers: Battelle’s direct staff of some 3,600 (not counting the federal labs it manages) includes more than 500 Columbus-area scientists and engineers.
“Battelle makes things that look simple in retrospect (but) require a lot of complexity to get there,” said Matt Vaughan, executive vice president of Battelle’s Applied Science & Technology group. “We look for problems that are really, really hard.”
Battelle’s revenue was $11 billion in 2022, more than double the not-quite $5 billion annually before Von Thaer was recruited in fall 2017.
About $10 billion represents mostly pass-through federal funding to national laboratories, for which Battelle receives a management fee as income. The other $1 billion is higher-margin contract research for government and commercial clients.
Both businesses have grown under Von Thaer, and the organization has grown more strategic about contracts. Battelle has allowed some to expire that were essentially glorified procurement, he said, pursuing projects where its R&D powers would add value.
And more often today, that value is taking the shape of technology that it can license for royalties or turn into a company.
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