Daikin Industries, Ltd.
Air Conditioning
Daikin began in 1924 as Osaka Kinzoku Kogyo, a small metalworking shop that made aircraft radiators, and did not make its first air conditioner until 1951. But it was a 1982 invention that defined the modern company: the variable refrigerant volume (VRV) system, which lets one outdoor unit drive many indoor units with individual temperature control. That single patent became the global standard for commercial air conditioning.
The invention is why Daikin is now the world's largest HVAC manufacturer by revenue: it controls roughly one quarter of the global air-conditioning market, and its lineup runs from residential split units to chillers for skyscrapers, data centers, and semiconductor fabs — a segment where precision temperature control is a production requirement, not a comfort feature.
Based in Osaka with about 98,000 employees and annual revenue near ¥4.4 trillion (US$30 billion), Daikin also makes its own refrigerants and fluorochemicals, giving it vertical control over the chemistry inside every unit it sells. That integration — compressors, inverters, refrigerants, and controls in one house — is the moat competitors keep trying to cross.
