
Ask HN: What are some less known but powerful/important companies? -  kurmouk
Do companies similar to, for example, Qualcomm exist. 
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muzani
It depends what you haven't heard of.  I've certainly heard of Qualcomm and I
don't even live in the same time zone. 

There's companies like Mindgeek which own about 80% of the porn on the
internet. 

Nestlé, Pepsi Co, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars,
Associated British Foods, and Mondelez own nearly all the major food brands in
the world. 

Agriculture is also huge - many of the billionaires in my country are related
to agriculture, or agricultural products like latex gloves and condoms. 

Chinese tech companies tend to be underrated because many of them are private. 
Huawei makes similar revenue to Google and probably writes more code, but you
don't see people fantasizing about working there.  There's also ZTE, Tencent. 

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an4rchy
It depends on what you mean by less known/powerful

A lot of companies that the general public doesn't tend to hear about are
either outside of CPG/outside of your geography/outside of industries you hear
about in the news or just private companies or holding companies.  Some have
really high revenues or # of employees. 

A couple of companies I was surprised by revenues:

\- Cargill/Koch both have $100B+ revenues

\- Exor (Italy/Netherlands) $143B+

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evanwarfel
G4S is the world's third-largest private employer; they run private prisons. 

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randomacct3847
Many private equity firms are the real owners of a lot of brands you probably
heard of i.e. JAB holdings owns Peet’s coffee, Panera, Pret, Krispy Kreme,
Krueger, etc etc

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jamieweb
MarkMonitor, who provide big-enterprise domain name registration and brand
protection.  You'll find a significant number of big corporations have their
domain name registered with them. 

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gcb0
think tanks.