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KOCH INVESTS: Koch Disruptive Technologies Leads $15M Series A Funding in OnRamp, an AI-Driven Customer Onboarding and Engagement Platform

Governance

The following stories demonstrate the latest ways we’re putting our Stewardship Framework into action to create value in mutually beneficial ways.

Frontline Employees Key to Safety Improvements at Georgia-Pacific Crossett Facility

Plant leaders at Georgia-Pacific’s pulp and paper plant in Crossett, Arkansas, recognized that they could be doing better when it came to rendering uncontrolled and unguarded energy safe for work. The procedures for this work are supposed to ensure that a machine is completely locked out from the source of energy that makes it move before someone gets close enough to be in danger, whether that’s to clear a jam or perform routine maintenance. When a self-assessment led by the GP safety capability and supported by the site discovered that the lockout tagout procedures had succumbed to entropy and varied depending on the department, site manager Deb Coduto said it was a humbling moment. “If this doesn’t give you a lump in your throat,” she said. “I don’t know what will.” Immediately, she knew they needed to do something different. At Koch, safety is our first priority. By empowering their hourly employees to discover and implement bottom-up solutions, the Crossett team made changes to their processes, procedures and training that have led to a safer working environment for everyone at the plant. “I knew there were some gaps, I didn’t realize how much had changed,” said Mark Stanley, a master tech winder operator who’s been at the facility for almost 17 years. To get the best results, they decided they needed to pull in team members who were closest to the work. They identified nine people who worked directly with the equipment every day and tasked them with finding out everything that needed to be done to get something to a true zero-energy state. It wasn’t going to be easy. “Developing procedures and learning how to do it the right way is one thing,” Deb said. “But then being able to be out front, teaching, coaching, and changing the way we think about the work — that’s going to be a difficult task.” For nearly a year, the nine-person team has been working with employees to develop, review and get new procedures approved. So far, more than 1,200 have been updated. Mark, who is a part of the improvement team, said that as they’ve gone to the various departments to gather information, people have asked a lot of good questions. “We tried to describe where the lockout was on a piece of equipment, and if they thought they had a better place or a better way to describe it, they would let us know,” he said. David Parker is a skill builder in the facility’s bath tissue converting operations who has been with Georgia-Pacific for 22 years. He’s also a member of the improvement team. He said there’s a credibility the updated and new procedures have because they were developed together with the people who use the machines every day. The employees who have been through the training really understand the why behind the procedure and how that understanding is key to their safety. “It’s about getting to zero energy when we’re working on the equipment. That’s the bottom line,” he said. “And this makes it a lot easier.” The efforts of everyone at the facility have increased their knowledge about what it really means to get something to a zero-energy state. Deb says they’ve also reinforced their understanding of the principle of bottom-up vs. top-down and have seen just how valuable it can be when you empower employees to find and implement solutions. “We wouldn’t have made the progress that we’ve made without that team,” she said. “Now I’ve got nine subject matter experts who are able to have those conversations about what the risk is when we don’t fully lock something out and what really can happen.”

Koch Partners Commission First US Solar-Powered Steel Rebar Mill

The solar facility was customized to maximize Hybar’s uptime and provide as much power as possible to run the mill year-round, nonstop without drawing on supplemental sources. When the sun is shining, the mill will run entirely on solar energy. Its 80 MWh capacity battery energy storage system will provide enough electricity to operate the mill for approximately two hours when the sun is down. To source the scrap steel, Hybar partnered with KM&T as its preferred partner. KM&T, a global leader in commodity markets, will provide quality control, proprietary market analytics, robust risk management and integrated logistics. “From a KM&T investment standpoint, we really want to have an opportunity to improve the value that the Hybar facility will bring to society,” said Joe Hand, president of minerals at KM&T.

Charles Koch Awarded 2025 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty

The Cato Institute has awarded Koch Chairman and co-CEO Charles Koch with the 2025 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty for his lifelong pursuit of advocating for individual liberty and free enterprise. The award was presented in Washington, D.C., on May 1. “For decades, Charles Koch has dedicated his entrepreneurial vision, resources and leadership to advancing liberty, human flourishing and the principles of a free and open society,” says Peter Goettler, president of the Cato Institute. Throughout his life, Charles, who will turn 90 later this year, has championed ideas that empower individuals to innovate, succeed and create value for others. These ideas serve as the foundation of his Principle Based Management™ philosophy, a framework based on principles of human progress that enable individuals and organizations to succeed long term by creating superior value for others. "With so much change, and chaos and conflict, too many people and organizations are abandoning these principles and turning to power to solve problems," Charles told the guests at the awards gala. "But we know from history, this just makes them worse. People have forgotten that when principles are lost, so are freedom and progress."

Using AI To Find Real Value with Georgia-Pacific’s Digital Mezzanine

In today’s fast-paced industrial landscape, identifying meaningful improvements is key to staying ahead of the competition. At Georgia-Pacific, their innovative homegrown tool known as Digital Mezzanine is helping to do just that — transforming raw machine data into actionable insights through the power of AI and machine learning. The Digital Mezzanine ingests a continuous stream of data from converting equipment across multiple facilities, meticulously analyzing when, why, and for how long a machine enters a fault state. But it’s not just about spotting problems; it’s about understanding which problems can be fixed to generate real value and helping solve those problems more quickly. Adam Dunigan, creator of Digital Mezzanine, said they call these “compressible opportunities.” By comparing fault data over time and across machines and facilities, the system can identify and differentiate between issues that are part of normal baseline operations and those that exist outside of normal and can be improved. It's like when your smart watch notifies you that you didn't get as much sleep last night as you normally do. “Prior to Digital Mezzanine, it was all about going after your top losses,” he said. “We’d be banging our heads against the walls trying to fix a systemic problem, like a paper tear. Such problems are unavoidable. You will always see those occur to some extent, so you’re working on a problem that may be impossible or unrealistic to eliminate if you only follow a top losses approach. Digital Mezzanine identifies and prioritizes opportunities with proven value to capture, not just top losses.” It’s a paradigm shift for many facilities. Instead of focusing on just the problems that cause the most downtime but tend to occur regardless of interventions, Digital Mezzanine zeroes in on those issues that, once addressed, drive measurable improvements in productivity, reliability and safety. Adam shared one example of the system highlighting a fault that happened at a palletizer – an automated machine that stacks and arranges cases of product onto a pallet for handling, storage and shipping. In this case, the fault was a slip sheet lost by gripper. The AI model looks at the fault, knows what product was running, and analyzes historical data to see what “good” looks like. Should the operators expect five of those faults a day or 50 or never any at all? Adam said in this case, they shouldn’t really be seeing any of those at all, and in the last four hours, they’ve seen five faults. “If they continue to see this fault at that rate, they’ll have 80 stop conditions over the next 24 hours,” he said. “So, they’ve got something that’s really bugging them.” Now that an issue has been recognized and highlighted, a sophisticated large language model leverages a vast repository of machine manuals and documentation to generate tailored troubleshooting steps. These proposed solutions are validated by senior technicians and subject matter experts to ensure safety and feasibility before operators see them. “The Digital Mezzanine software consolidates all that information and generates a fairly succinct output for us that says, when you see this failure mode start to tick up, here are the steps that you should take to resolve it,” explained Adam. He said it’s been one of the most successful implementations of AI tools across Georgia-Pacific to date. Georgia-Pacific facilities that have embraced this technology have reported an average 15% improvement in machine efficiency with a limited initial investment. The platform’s scalability is another key strength. Georgia-Pacific is deploying Digital Mezzanine across as many machines as possible and even sharing this advanced technology with other Koch companies, like Guardian. Ultimately, the Digital Mezzanine is more than just a tool for loss reduction. It is a paradigm shift — turning mountains of complex data into clear, prioritized pathways for improvement. It helps engineers and operators alike understand not just what is going wrong, but why, and how to fix it safely and efficiently. “This helps folks understand the problems quickly so they can be addressed when they are small rather than letting them progress into really large problems,” Adam said. “And the technology and our capabilities keep evolving, so we’ve got no shortage of things that we want to go after.”

Unlocking Potential Key Lessons for Interns at Koch

KOCH INVESTS: Scaling Up a Transformational Cell Therapy Manufacturer

Koch Disruptive Technologies recently led a $255 million Series C funding round in Cellares . The California-based cell therapy contract manufacturer is building the world’s first commercial-scale integrated development and manufacturing organization (IDMO) Smart Factory to reach more patients in need. WHY IT MATTERS: As the first IDMO dedicated to clinical and industrial-scale cell therapy manufacturing, Cellares’ new 118,000-square-foot plant in Bridgewater, New Jersey, will be capable of producing 40,000 cell therapy batches per year – 10 times more than a traditional contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). WHY KOCH INVESTED: “Cell therapies have tremendous curative potential across a wide range of diseases. But right now, manufacturing by conventional CDMOs is expensive, failure-prone and impossible to scale,” said David Mauney, managing director of Koch Disruptive Technologies. “Cellares is driving transformation in the marketplace by combining an Industry 4.0 approach with full vertical integration. As the first IDMO, Cellares is empowering cell therapy companies to build viable businesses, remain competitive and meet the needs of fast-growing patient populations.” WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “The creation of the first IDMO marks the beginning of a new era, in which cell therapies will finally be able to reach patients in need,” said Cellares CEO Fabian Gerlinghaus. “We've developed integrated technologies for the entire drug development and manufacturing life cycle. Now we're leveraging these technologies to offer global manufacturing services for the living drugs of the 21st century. Our partners are some of the best academics, biotechs and large pharma companies in the world. We're enabling them to meet total patient demand, improve consistency and quality, lower manufacturing costs and accelerate expansion to new markets.” Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. also participated in the round, along with DFJ Growth, Willett Advisors and existing investors Eclipse, Decheng Capital and 8VC. WHAT’S NEXT: Cellares’ Technology Adoption Partnership (TAP) program enables participating cell therapy providers to automate and tech-transfer manual processes onto the Cell Shuttle manufacturing platform in just six months, enabling instantaneous transfers across Cellares Smart Factories. In addition to the New Jersey facility, it will also break ground on Europe’s first IDMO Smart Factory in 2024. Cellares currently operates two more Smart Factories in the U.S. GO DEEPER: Read more about the investment on Bloomberg .

Driving Competitive Advantage Through AI

That will only be accomplished, however, if we can distill the hype surrounding publicly available tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini from AI’s real-world transformative potential for businesses and individuals. Technology, for the sake of technology, doesn’t lead to transformation or profits. Moreover, with AI, there are plenty of challenges, including ethical dilemmas and bias, legal and compliance concerns, and potential job displacement fears, that must be strategically managed and purposefully addressed. Koch’s principle-based approach is our beacon as we embrace this new technology and start to make decisions consistent with our beliefs and values on how and when to use AI, ensuring this technology advances human progress in a mutually beneficial way for businesses and our employees. Central to this transformation is our conviction that AI will not supplant human ingenuity and intelligence but complement and amplify it. What differentiates Koch from many other businesses is how we apply our risk philosophy to the challenging decisions surrounding when and how to adopt AI. Jump in too quickly and without guardrails and you could expose yourself to business and reputational risks, cyberattacks or the loss of intellectual property. Remain too cautious and you’ll miss out on a potential opportunity to empower your employees, transform how you do business and gain a competitive advantage (or lose share to those who figure it out faster). Our current approach to building AI capabilities includes asking our leaders to empower employees to experiment within their teams to expand their knowledge of these emerging technologies, accelerate personal transformation, and share their newly acquired knowledge to contribute to the profitable deployment of AI. We empower our employees to use principles of economic thinking to optimize for risk and seek solutions and advancements in AI that positively affect their day-to-day work. If we had waited to try and mitigate every imaginable risk, we would have lost out on a groundswell of innovation currently happening across Koch. Here are a few examples of how Koch is learning and attempting to leverage AI, including generative AI, to help our employees become more productive, make better decisions and help them discover new gifts and talents. AskFred The Principle Based Management™ group has partnered with Koch Global Services for several months to develop AskFred, an AI-driven chatbot to tutor employees as they apply PBM principles in their work. Inspired by Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, we are teaching AskFred PBM materials such as supervisor responsibilities and expectations, Our Values and the five dimensions. So far, development and testing have primarily focused on AskFred engaging with supervisors as a coach to stimulate critical thinking, make informed decisions and practice conversations. In coming weeks, the team will prepare AskFred to help all employees (not just supervisors) and test it with a larger group of employees before introducing it to the entire organization. Plant Operations Georgia-Pacific is using AI to help monitor and analyze data from thousands of sensors placed in machines across its more than 140 manufacturing facilities. The application of AI (and associated machine learning approaches) allows us to build predictive models that alert operators with a high level of precision when a machine or a critical part inside of a machine is likely to fail. This provides remote and onsite personnel with crucial information, helping them make decisions that reduce unplanned downtime for machines and keep the plant operating at peak efficiency. We are also adding generative AI capabilities to our plants. Upon discovering an alert or fault, operators will be able to interact with intelligent chatbots that have learned from volumes of manuals and other relevant documents and materials to help employees find an appropriate solution. Finance Our finance teams are starting to leverage generative AI to integrate quantitative and qualitative data as well as generate analysis and insights through a chat interface. This allows the users to search the data for custom and personalized insights that are most important to them versus a printed report or standard dashboard. These approaches are proving to be more efficient and enable new insights that might not surface through traditional reporting. During the next 12 to 18 months, the most significant opportunity lies in our ability to enable and empower our employees to use this technology to fundamentally reset the way they have historically done their jobs. Just think what it would look like if AI enabled all 120,000-plus employees to achieve a few hours of productivity gains each week or to find new talents. There is little doubt that artificial intelligence is here to stay and is potentially the most disruptive technology of our lifetime. Our ability to leverage it to transform us individually and collectively as Koch Industries will be grounded in our ability to create virtuous cycles of mutual benefit through the union of human judgment and machine intelligence.

Flint Hills Resources and Ducks Unlimited Celebrate 40 Years of Partnership

Partnership Highlight: Minnesota’s Indian Lake Wildlife Management Area One example of how this sustained partnership produces meaningful results – such as improved wildlife habitat and expanded recreation opportunities on public land – can be seen in the wetland and grassland restoration efforts at Minnesota’s Indian Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA), where Flint Hills and DU celebrated a decade of conservation work together last summer. In its past, Indian Lake, a state-designated wildlife management lake, hosted many waterfowl, particularly diving ducks. Conditions deteriorated over time due to high water levels, watershed changes and undesirable fish, like carp. DU, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), private landowners, and many other organizations, like Flint Hills, worked together to restore Indian Lake WMA. “Without the generosity from partners like Flint Hills Resources, we could never have gotten this project off the ground,” said Adam DeHaan, DU senior director of development. “Flint Hills has been a loyal DU partner for four decades, and has always been dedicated to making a difference in the communities it serves. DU is grateful for their commitment to habitat conservation and the protection of wildlife, which depend on these places to survive.” Flint Hills’ financial support for this project assisted with securing funding from Minnesota's Outdoor Heritage Fund and opened up matching federal funds from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. Those contributions supported construction of a new water-control structure and outlet pipeline that MNDNR site managers use to perform temporary water level drawdowns of Indian Lake. Drawdowns allow sediments to consolidate and native plants to grow, which waterfowl use as a food source when the shallow lake and surrounding wetlands are restored to their full capacity. Drawdowns can also assist in eliminating invasive fish species. In 2017, with Flint Hills’ ongoing support, the project grew and DU began acquiring properties that have since been added to Indian Lake WMA, expanding the site to over 600 acres. Each tract was restored and enhanced, providing nesting habitat for waterfowl and other grassland-dependent birds. The restored wetlands are also critical for ducks during the migration, providing habitat in the fall and in spring, on their return flight to the breeding grounds. “This critical conservation work could not have been done without our corporate partners, including Flint Hills,” said John Lindstrom, DU manager of conservation programs. “There are all kinds of wildlife using the lake and the restored properties. We have heard a lot of good things from hunters and birdwatchers about the current state of the WMA. This is just one example of our success working alongside Flint Hills in Minnesota to advance wetlands conservation.” About Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend refinery The Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend refinery produces transportation fuels used throughout the Midwest, including most of Minnesota’s gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, as well as other products people rely on such as propane and asphalt. Located 17 miles southeast of Minneapolis, Pine Bend has a refining capacity of 375,000 barrels per day and is among the most efficient oil refineries in the country. Flint Hills Resources directly and indirectly supports more than 4,000 Minnesota jobs and has invested nearly $1.7 billion in upgrades and improvements to its Minnesota facilities since 2010. With more than 1,000 full-time employees, the Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend refinery is one of the largest employers in Dakota County. More information about the Pine Bend refinery is available at PineBendRefinery.com . About Ducks Unlimited Ducks Unlimited Inc. is the world's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving North America's continually disappearing wetlands, grasslands and other waterfowl habitats. Established in 1937, Ducks Unlimited has restored or protected more than 19 million acres thanks to contributions from more than a million supporters across the continent. Guided by science, DU’s projects benefit waterfowl, wildlife and people in all 50 states. DU is growing its mission through a historic $3 billion Conservation For A Continent comprehensive campaign. Learn more at www.ducks.org .

UK Tax Stretegy

We consider that the publication of this UK tax strategy complies with the obligations of the Koch UK Group1 under Part 2 of Schedule 19, Finance Act 2016. Commitment to Compliance Under the Principle Based Management™ philosophy, which is the framework for all activity at Koch Inc, Integrity, and Stewardship & Compliance, are two specific Principles , and under these Principles there is an expectation that all employees strive to comply with all laws and regulations in all territories where we operate. For Koch Inc, compliance means paying the right amount of tax in the right place at the right time, filing tax returns on a complete and timely basis, and ensuring that relevant facts and circumstances are appropriately disclosed. Level of risk in relation to UK taxation that the group is prepared to accept Due to the size and complexity of our business, risks may sometimes arise in relation to the interpretation of tax law or the nature of our compliance obligations. Koch Inc has internal processes to identify, evaluate, manage and resolve such risks. In situations of significant uncertainty or complexity in relation to a specific risk, advice would be sought from external advisers. Attitude of the group to tax planning Koch’s Code of Conduct places the responsibility on each employee to conduct commercial activity lawfully and with integrity. In making commercial decisions, Koch Inc takes tax into account in the same way as any other legitimate cost. Where there is more than one way of structuring a commercial business arrangement, all factors are taken into consideration including tax. We ensure all business arrangements are compliant with the laws and relevant regulations in the jurisdictions concerned. We do not use marketed tax avoidance schemes, nor do we use any tax planning that is contrived or artificial. Approach toward dealings with HMRC Koch Inc believes in co-operative engagement with tax authorities, with the aim of building a relationship based on mutual respect and compliance. We work with HMRC to resolve any issues affecting the Koch UK Group in a positive and professional manner through pro-active discussion. Approach of the Koch UK Group to risk management and governance arrangements in relation to UK taxation The senior leadership team of Koch Inc takes the lead in establishing a strong risk management culture and is responsible for the Koch UK Group’s tax affairs and oversight of tax risk. The governance of tax risk follows formal procedures which are fully aligned with other governance procedures that are in place across Koch Inc in respect of a range of other risks to which Koch Inc is exposed. The UK tax affairs of the Koch UK Group are managed by a team of suitably qualified tax professionals, supported where appropriate by external advisors. These arrangements ensure that all significant UK tax-related decisions are subject to review and approval, and that all UK tax obligations are met. 1. The “Koch UK Group” refers to all the UK subsidiaries and affiliates of Koch Inc 2. “Koch Inc” refers to the worldwide group of entities whose ultimate parent company is Koch Inc Last published December 2025