General Electric

General Electric was an American industrial conglomerate formed in 1892 by the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston, and its direct successor today is GE Aerospace, a maker of aircraft engines. After breaking into three companies between 2023 and 2024, the business reported 2025 revenue of $45.9 billion and about 57,000 employees as GE Aerospace.

History of General Electric

The General Electric Company was formed in 1892 when Edison General Electric merged with the Thomson-Houston Company. Charles A. Coffin was its first president, and the financier J.P. Morgan helped arrange the consolidation. In 1896 General Electric was one of the original 12 companies on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

In 1900 the company set up its first permanent research laboratory in Schenectady, New York. It began making X-ray tubes and complete X-ray machines in 1912. In 1919 a GE researcher invented the magnetron, and GE, AT&T and Westinghouse helped create the Radio Corporation of America that year. GE bought RCA again in 1985.

The company also made superchargers for cars and airplanes in the 1920s. In the 1940s GE became a major maker of electric and diesel-electric locomotives, which were replacing steam. It built an experimental jet engine in 1940 and developed the first American jet engine in 1942. GE scientists developed Lexan plastic by accident in 1953, and Robert N. Hall invented the solid-state laser at GE in 1962.

GE and the French firm SNECMA formed CFM International in a partnership that began in the 1970s, and the CFM56 engine became dominant in short-haul airliners. Jack Welch became chief executive in 1981 and served until 2001, when Jeffrey Immelt took over. European Union regulators blocked a proposed merger with Honeywell in 2001.

GE also built a large finance business. The Electric Bond and Share Company, formed in 1905 to finance small utilities, was a forerunner of GE Commercial Finance. GE Credit Corporation began in 1932 so families could buy GE appliances on credit, and the 2008 financial crisis led GE to sell assets, including its appliance and finance divisions. It sold its appliance business to Haier in 2016, merged its oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes in 2017 and was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2018.

In 2021 GE announced that it would split into three companies under chief executive Lawrence Culp. GE HealthCare was spun off on January 4, 2023, and GE Vernova, the energy business, was spun off on April 2, 2024. The remaining aviation business became GE Aerospace, and the General Electric name was retired after about 130 years.

Products and services of General Electric

GE Aerospace reports two main segments. Commercial Engines and Services makes and supports engines for commercial aircraft, and Defense and Propulsion Technologies serves military customers. The company has an installed base of about 50,000 commercial and 30,000 military aircraft engines.

In 2025 the commercial engines segment had orders of $54.4 billion, up 35 percent, and revenue of $33.3 billion, up 24 percent. Its operating profit grew 26 percent to $8.9 billion, and it reported record deliveries of the LEAP engine, which rose 28 percent from 2024.

The defense segment had orders of $13.4 billion, up 19 percent, and revenue of $10.6 billion, up 11 percent. Its operating profit grew 22 percent to $1.3 billion.

GE Aerospace also reports an insurance business and corporate items separately from these two segments. Most of the original General Electric’s other businesses now sit in two separate companies, GE HealthCare and GE Vernova.

Corporate structure and operations

GE Aerospace is headquartered near Cincinnati, Ohio, and it licenses the GE brand to GE HealthCare and GE Vernova. GE had moved its headquarters from Connecticut to Boston in 2016. The company describes a global team of about 57,000 employees.

Revenue for 2025 was $45.9 billion, up 18 percent. Adjusted revenue, a measure that excludes insurance, was $42.3 billion, up 21 percent. Net income attributable to the company was $8.7 billion. Total orders were $66.2 billion, up 32 percent.

Wikipedia’s account of the breakup describes GE Aerospace as the legal successor to the original GE, which is why this entry covers both the old conglomerate and the present aerospace company.

GE HealthCare and GE Vernova are separate companies with their own results, so the 2025 figures here for GE Aerospace do not include them. Insurance and corporate items are reported outside the two engine segments.

Impact of General Electric

General Electric was long a symbol of American industry. It was among the first 12 stocks in the Dow Jones average in 1896, a position it lost in 2018, and its research laboratory of 1900 followed an approach set by Thomas Edison.

Its inventions and products touched many industries, from the magnetron and the laser to Lexan plastic, electric locomotives and X-ray equipment. Its installed base of about 50,000 commercial aircraft engines, including the CFM56 and LEAP lines, places it deep in commercial aviation.

The 2023 and 2024 spin-offs show how a company that began with the electric generator business and later made appliances narrowed its focus to aircraft engines.

Criticism and controversies

GE discharged about 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Hudson River over 30 years ending in 1977, from two capacitor plants at Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, New York. PCBs are industrial chemicals that were banned from production in 1977. The Environmental Protection Agency placed the site, a stretch of about 200 miles from Hudson Falls to New York City, on its Superfund National Priorities List in 1984.

In 2002 the agency decided that GE should dredge about 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from a 40-mile section of the Upper Hudson. GE carried out the work under a 2006 agreement, and the agency oversaw it. Dredging ran from 2009 to the fall of 2015 and removed about 2.75 million cubic yards, and five-year reviews of the cleanup have continued since. The first phase ran from May to November 2009 and removed about 283,000 cubic yards, and the second phase began in June 2011 and removed about 2.5 million cubic yards. In December 2010 GE agreed to conduct and pay for the second phase. The first five-year review was completed in June 2012, and the second was finalized in April 2019.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 4, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue