Companies have plenty of good reasons to keep things under wraps, whether they’re trade secrets, upcoming products, or even confidential government contracts. But some businesses take things beyond what seems normal, going to great lengths to keep things under the radar, even going so far as to keep their entire company a secret for years. Read on, and we’ll take a look at 12 incredibly secretive companies, including some you’ve probably never even heard about.
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Next Jump
Chances are, you have no idea what Next Jump is unless you’re a customer or employee. Which is odd, because it was around for 15 years without so much as a peep about the company until a story appeared in the New York Times in 2010. Despite raising, $45 million in venture capital and employing 225 people, the company preferred to stay quiet, even after signing up 60% of the Fortune 500 as customers. CEO and founder Charlie Kim shared their simple strategy: “Our thought was to stay quiet until it feels like we had an elephant under a hay stack,” and it certainly seems that they’ve gotten there, running an amazingly large group of direct merchant offers businesses. This includes employee discount and reward programs for 90,000 corporations, connecting them with 28,000 retailers and manufacturers. If you’re doing the math, Next Jump operates discount programs for about 1/3 of all US corporate employees. But despite the company’s clearly huge reach, you’ve probably never even heard about it. -
Bridgewater
Unlike Next Jump, you probably have actually heard of Bridgewater Associates, even if you don’t know exactly what they do. Of course, that’s only because Bridgewater wants you to know about them. For years, the hedge fund (the largest private fund in the world, in fact) was secretive and media shy about pretty much everything, including the firm’s dealings, how much money they made, and how much the CEO earned. But recently, after the fund’s principles were leaked on the web, founder Ray Dalio has been making media appearances, speaking out about the global economy, Occupy Wall Street, and of course, the principles of the company. All the secrecy and success has led some critics to say that Bridgewater is a cult, but Dalio insists that’s not true, sharing that the number one principle is “Don’t believe anything, think for yourself. And now let’s go through a process of what is true. Together.” -
Apple
Apple is, in a word, paranoid. But given that news of Apple products spreads like wildfire, that paranoia might be justified. Still, Apple has an incredible culture of secrecy, firing employees for leaks, and even suing media outlets. The company goes beyond the standard non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements found in most technology companies, forbidding employees from talking about unannounced products, even giving false information to employees to track leaks. Top secret projects are closely guarded, with security that conjures up images of intense movie break-ins: several security doors, badge checks, and keyed codes to gain access to offices, with work spaces monitored by security cameras. But perhaps all of this secrecy really works for Apple. After all, the major goal of keeping things secret is controlling information and keeping the element of surprise, which Apple does very well, often sparking media and Internet storms over new releases and announcements. -
Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe’s image is one of accessibility and affordability, bringing simple luxuries to the masses. In their friendly stores, employees are happy to take care of every little thing. But things are not so friendly when it comes to company information. In fact, it seems like Trader Joe’s doesn’t even want you to know where their headquarters is, with no signs indicating their office in Monrovia. The company also doesn’t often share the information that it’s owned by a German family, the Albrechts, who, not at all surprisingly, are very private. They own the Aldi Nord supermarket empire, and are notorious in Germany for not talking to the press, a practice that has been extended in the US. The company repeatedly declined requests for a story from Fortune, and has declined to participate in stories about its business. Still, Trader Joe’s remains a friendly, fun place to shop, and the company is on a slow growth track, working hard to keep its image as a neighborhood store despite its transparency issues. -
Bechtel
Bechtel is the largest engineering company in the US, and the third-largest privately owned company in the US, but there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of it. This is absolutely amazing, considering that the company was founded back in 1898, and has been involved in high profile construction projects including the Hoover Dam, Big Dig in Boston, Jubail Industrial City (yes, an entire city), and the rebuilding of the infrastructure of Iraq. But as a private family corporation, Bechtel has kept up a cloak of secrecy, even giving itself the name of Project X when shopping for real estate. The company is so secretive that a book has been written about their practices: Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, which describes in detail how the group covers up secrets, conflicts of interests, spying, and more through high profile friends, typically former executives who have moved on to key positions in the government or industry. -
Science Applications International Corporation
While Bechtel secretly builds the entire world without anyone knowing about it, SAIC creates the technology needed to support it all. Operating as what is known as a “stealth company,” SAIC has more than 9,000 government contracts, and many of them involve secret intelligence. More than half of SAIC’s employees have CIA security clearances, and the company has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America, some of them worth millions and even billions of dollars. But SAIC stays below the radar, almost never sharing its activities in public, and keeping large scale failures (including an overachieving NSA computer system and burglary of SAIC’s headquarters) under wraps thanks to friends in high places, including former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was once a member of SAIC’s board of directors. -
Renaissance Technologies
Like Bridgewater, Renaissance Technologies is another humongous hedge fund, with over $15 billion in assets. They do very well, and of course, outside investors would love to know how they do it. But like so many large hedge funds, Renaissance uses secret “black box” formulas that make up a major part of their investment strategy. They bring in non-financial specialists, including statisticians, mathematics, and even scientists to create secret formulas that allow them to consistently outperform the market successfully. These secrets are closely guarded — after all, they’ve been called the “modern-day equivalent of the Holy Grail” — and Renaissance conducts its business in a shroud of secrecy. RenTech is very careful about on-site security, engaging in what can be called “CIA-esque” secrecy. This includes being very restrictive with employees entering and leaving the office, not allowing them to bring in any materials like flash drives or cameras that could be used to steal algorithms. -
Google
As a search engine, Google will tell you anything you want to know, provided you type it into a little box first. But if you want to know something about the company, good luck with that. Googlers are known for giving presentations with hacked numbers, typically, changes from the PR department so that the general public doesn’t really know exactly how much server space the company employs, and how much of the web has actually been indexed. Why is Google so secretive about this information? Because if competitors knew, they’d have an idea of how much capital they’d need to get up to Google level, and perhaps even take center stage. Even more guarded is how Google has been able to consistently return the most relevant search engine results, a feat of information that is highly coveted by competitors. Google is tight-lipped even in the face of the Department of Justice, fighting a federal subpoena for information from search indexes and databases due to fears of leaks, even under court seal. Even those working at Google aren’t likely to know more than what they really need to, with growth strategies and other secrets held only by the upper echelons of the company. Google typically only shares what it is legally required to as a public company, including its profit, expenses, and balance sheet, but leaving out precious details about how Google works and what’s ahead in the future. But despite keeping things close to the chest, Google stock has been a runaway hit, so it seems that investors don’t really miss the information that Google keeps so secret anyway. -
Boeing
Boeing is yet another huge government contractor with sharing issues. Like Bechtel and SAIC, Boeing has millions in assets (more than $68 billion as of 2010), much of it made up of government contracts. The company focuses on aerospace and defense in particular, and is the third largest contractor in aerospace and defense. Of course, as a government contractor working on top-secret projects including killer drones, you’d expect a certain level of secrecy, but Boeing seems to go beyond what’s necessary, even going so far as to insist on insane levels of secrecy in incentive deals, refusing to release information about incentives to the public, even though they were worth an estimated $450 million. And even once the bonds were granted, Boeing didn’t even have to show proof that they were spent as intended. Perhaps because no one really knew how they were supposed to be spent in the first place. But Boeing does not seem to respect the secrecy of others. In fact, in 2006, Boeing paid $615 million to settle cases related to illegally hiring government officials and improperly using proprietary information, a number that comes from a larger figure, $1.6 billion, the total of funds used to settle cases of misconduct since 1995. So it is not at all surprising to find out that WikiLeaks revealed that Boeing was using US diplomats as a sales force to compete against European competitor Airbus. -
Xe Services
If the name Xe Services doesn’t ring a bell, that’s not surprising, because you probably know them much better as Blackwater. The company, which provides private military services to the US government on a contractual basis, presumably changed their name to shake off the bad reputation they picked up in Iraq, including multiple charges of murder, child prostitution, and weapons smuggling. As the State Department’s largest private security contractor Xe basically farms out killers for cash, but they’re not going to tell you about that. In 2004, the CIA hired Xe to locate and assassinate top Al Quaeda operatives (contracts that were unsuccessful), but it took five years for the information about the program to reach the public. But even more surprising, even the Congressional Intelligence Committee wasn’t clued into the deal until 2009, and the House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law in keeping this program a secret from Congress, raising questions about accountability in covert operations, particularly those with lethal authority. -
Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, isn’t just peddling books anymore. In fact, he’s the proud yet quiet owner of an aerospace company, Blue Origin. Aerospace is a competitive business environment, and the Blue Origin crew keeps things close to the chest, almost to the point of paranoia. The company typically declines attempts for interviews, and rarely says anything publicly. In fact, the company itself wasn’t even announced until three years after it was founded, and company activities are kept quiet as well. In August 2011, a mysterious flight test was carried out, experiencing “flight instability” and resulting in an explosion, but the failure didn’t reach the national press until over a week later, nine days to be exact. Even local officials near the launch site were left in the dark, completely caught off guard when citizens called in an exploded airplane falling to the ground. But Blue Origin does have some locals on the payroll, even members of the volunteer fire department, who are all sworn to secrecy and will not return requests for interviews. However, Blue Origin may not be able to stay secret much longer, as it’s begun to take public money and will have to open up at some point. -
Coca-Cola
From the very beginning, Coca-Cola has insisted on secrecy, and the company is famous for being ultra-protective about the secret formula for its flagship Coke. Rumors of only two company officials knowing half of the formula each have circulated for years, and although several people have come forward with handwritten formulas presumed to be the real thing, they have been waved off by the company as unauthentic time and time again. Coke even got the FBI involved in the theft of a new product sample in 2006. But their recipe isn’t the only thing Coke keeps secret: major contracts are kept under wraps as well, particularly with major universities, protected as trade secrets, apparently to protect Coke from being undercut by competitors in contracts and renewals, as well as avoid other schools from demanding similar deals. Coke’s secrecy is so extreme, that it may have even cost them a new bottling plant. In Baltimore, Coke was in talks to bring a new location to the city, but according to a consultant for the property owner, “The veil of secrecy impeded constructive dialogue,” creating fear and suspicion in the community, exacerbated by the fact that Coca-Cola representatives were not present in meetings called to discuss the project, which ultimately failed.
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