KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering. KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial, intelligence, and energy. The company supports various NASA programs, international partner space agencies, and commercial partners.
KBR was created in 1998 when M.W. Kellogg merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown & Root, to form Kellogg Brown & Root. In 2006, the company separated from Halliburton and completed an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's corporate offices are in the KBR Tower in downtown Houston.Eriksen, Helen. "Will KBR ditch its Houston headquarters for Katy suburbia?" Houston Chronicle. April 30, 2008. Retrieved on January 13, 2009.
In September 2025, KBR announced plans to spin-off Mission Technology Solutions, its government services business, into an independent public company. The new company will operate under the name Trinzic with completion targeted for January 2027. History M. W. Kellogg M.W. Kellogg Company was founded by Morris Woodruff Kellogg in New York City in 1901. At first, it specialized in oil refining and pipe design. In 1905 the company moved its headquarters to Jersey City, where it remained until 1971.
Kellogg's entry into process engineering initially focused on the Fleming cracking process, but in the 1920s Kellogg partnered with The Texas Company (Texaco) and Standard Oil of Indiana to purchase the Cross thermal cracking process. Kellogg set up one of the first petroleum laboratories in the country in 1926 to commercialize and then license the technology. This led to Kellogg building some 130 units in the United States and abroad.
In the 1940s, M.W. Kellogg built the first commercial FCC (fluid catalytic cracking) unit. It was commissioned in May 1942. Over the next two years, the company built 22 of the 34 FCC units constructed throughout the U.S.
Even bigger than the refining work was K-25, the gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, developed by Kellogg subsidiary the Kellex Corporation, built as part of the Manhattan Project. This period also included the development of the Benedict–Webb–Rubin (BWR) equation of state which has since become an industry mainstay and provided the basis for Kellogg's lead in cryogenics.
The 1950s Kellogg technology expanded into steam pyrolysis, Orthoflow fluid catalytic cracking, phenol-from-cumene and coal-to-synthetic fuels technologies and the 1960s saw the growth in helium recovery, ethylene, and the development of Kellogg's ammonia process. Kellogg maintained New York offices at 225 Broadway in the Transportation Building until 1956 when it moved to 711 Third Avenue in Midtown.
In 1973, M.W. Kellogg received five contracts from China for the construction of large-scale ammonia plants. Kellogg's international work expanded to include major ammonia complexes in China, Indonesia, and Mexico as well as an LNG liquefaction plant in Algeria and two receiving terminals in the United States, the world's largest LPG plant in Kuwait and several fluid catalytic cracking units in Mexico.
Kellogg underwent numerous acquisitions and name changes until 1987, when it was acquired by Dresser Industries, a provider of integrated services and project management for the oil and gas industry. Ten years later, Halliburton acquired Dresser, and combined Kellogg with the company Brown & Root to create a new, larger subsidiary – Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR).
Brown & Root Brown & Root was founded in Texas in 1919 by Herman Brown and Daniel Root, with money provided by Root (Brown's brother in law). Root soon died and Herman Brown's younger brother, George R. Brown, joined the company in 1922 (according to Robert A. Caro's The Path to Power). The company began its operations by building roads in Texas.
One of its first large-scale projects, according to the book Cadillac Desert, was building a dam on the Texas Colorado River near Austin during the Depression years. For assistance in federal payments, the company turned to the local Congressman, Lyndon Johnson. Brown & Root was the principal source of campaign funds after Johnson's initial run for Congress in 1937, in return for persuading the Bureau of Reclamation to change its rules against paying for a dam on land the federal government did not own, a decision that had to go all the way to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After other very profitable construction projects for the federal government, Brown & Root gave massive sums of cash for Johnson's first run for the U.S. Senate in 1941.
During World War II, Brown & Root built the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and its subsidiary Brown Shipbuilding produced a series of warships for the U.S. government. In 1947 Brown & Root built one of the world's first offshore oil platforms.
According to Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains, Brown & Root was a contractor in the Péligre Dam project. The project was designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and financed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
Halliburton years Following the death of Herman Brown, Halliburton Energy Services acquired Brown & Root in December 1962. According to Dan Briody, who wrote a book on the subject, the company became part of a consortium called RMK-BRJ that built about 85 percent of the infrastructure needed by the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. In 1967, the Government Accounting Office alleged that Brown & Root had been unaccountable with public funds and allowed materials to be stolen. Donald Rumsfeld expressed concern that their contracts were not adequately audited. At this time, protesters derided Brown & Root as a symbol of war profiteering, dubbing the company "Burn & Loot".
In 1989, Halliburton acquired another major engineering and construction contractor, C. F. Braun Inc., of Alhambra California, and merged it into Brown & Root. From 1995 to 2002, Halliburton KBR was awarded at least $2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the U.S. Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP).
In September 2005, under a competitive bid contract it won in July 2005 to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters, KBR started assessment of the cleanup and reconstruction of Gulf Coast Marine and Navy facilities damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The facilities include: Naval Station Pascagoula, Naval Station Gulfport, the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, two smaller U.S. Navy facilities in New Orleans, Louisiana, and others in the Gulf Coast region.
Formation of KBR, Inc. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007, that it had separated from KBR, which had been its contracting, engineering, and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years. On November 16, 2006, KBR shares were offered for the public in an initial public offering with shares priced at $17. The shares closed up more than 22 percent to $20.75 a share on the first trading day.
Growth In May 2019, the company introduced new branding. At the end of 2023, KBR released KCap, a decarbonization technology offered in partnership with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), India.
As of 2024, the company supports various NASA programs, educational institutions, international partner space agencies, and commercial partners.
Spin-off of Mission Technology Solutions business as Trinzic In September 2025, KBR’s board of directors approved the spin-off of the company’s government services division, Mission Technology Solutions (MTS). MTS is set to become a new, independent publicly-traded company on January 4, 2027. After the spinoff, the company's sustainable technology business will continue to operate as KBR.
In June 2026, Michael LaRouche was named President and CEO and Nicholas Veasey was named Executive Vice President and CFO of the spin-off. On July 30, 2026, KBR announced the new company would operate under the name Trinzic.
Operations GICS Code Reclassification In April 2019, KBR's GICS code was reclassified as an IT consulting company by stock traders. MSCI, a New York firm that manages how companies are classified on various stock exchanges, reclassified KBR as a company specializing in "IT Consulting & Other Services." KBR has made a shift away from engineering and construction projects to government contracts that include information technology and other support services. KBR's government services sector accounted for more than 70 percent of the company's $4.9 billion revenue in 2018.
Facilities In 2008, KBR announced plans to develop a new office complex near the intersection of the Grand Parkway and Interstate 10 in western Harris County, Texas, between Houston and Katy, while maintaining a corporate presence in Downtown Houston. Later that year, the company canceled the project, citing economic conditions.
In January 2010, KBR announced plans to expand its downtown Houston presence and extend its lease commitments. The expansion replaced the previously proposed Harris County development and increased KBR's leased office space in downtown to more than 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m²).
In 2026, KBR opened an Innovation Studio in Bengaluru, India, in partnership with Applied Computing. The facility supports industrial artificial intelligence applications, remote monitoring, and advisory services using KBR's INSITE 3.0 platform and Applied Computing's Orbital system, for clients in the energy and industrial sectors and to expand KBR's digital capabilities in industrial operations.
Aerospace Environment Protection Lab KBR's Aerospace Environment Protection Lab is in San Antonio. It was previously the Brooks Air Force Base. The lab is used for intensive training of United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aviators. It includes "the pit," which houses a centrifuge that simulates high G-forces; altitude chambers used for training deep space pilots or astronauts; and hyperbaric chambers used to help the body heal and fight infections. It also houses the Panama Chamber, which is the oldest known dive chamber in the world. It was used during the construction of the Panama Canal.
Digital Engineering Lab In May 2025, KBR opened its new Digital Engineering Lab in Dayton, Ohio. At the lab, KBR and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base leadership plan, design, and test various systems for Air Force and military customers. The lab allows for the creation of prototype digital twins and uses KBR's “Game” simulation design tool to test designs before fabrication.
Sustainable technologies KBR licenses PureSAF technology, a sustainable aviation fuel technology developed by Swedish Biofuels.
In 2023, KBR was awarded a design and engineering contract from The Chemours Company to “increase and advance” technology for its membrane technology to support the hydrogen economy.
In 2024, KBR was selected to provide project management services for the design and construction of a refinery in Lobito, Benguela Province. It was also selected by First State Hydrogen, Inc. to support the "feasibility and development" of its first clean hydrogen production facility in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region.
In September 2024, KTJV, a KBR and Technip Energies joint venture, received a contract to convert an existing natural gas import regasification terminal to a liquefied gas export plant.
In 2026, PureSAF was selected for proposed commercial-scale facilities in Latvia, Singapore and Kazakhstan, including a planned 100,000-ton-per-year facility in Singapore and Kazakhstan's first SAF production plant.
Sustainable technology & decarbonization In the 2020s and early 2024, KBR announced multiple sustainable technology, decarbonization, and low-carbon projects worldwide. Some of these include:
Ammonia Technology Projects