The biggest claim to fame that Nanotrasen hold is their advanced computers. Making use of bluespace principles and trace amounts of phoron, Nanotrasen has managed to corner a market for computers that still follow Moore's Law, and their chips are used in the vast majority of modern electronics. Nanotrasen's computers have become so ubiquitous that their logo is present in almost every device's default background, and their systems are often treated as the industry standard for everything from communications to integrated computers.
| Headquarters: | The Brick, Tau Ceti, UNIP |
| Motto: | Depth Over Breadth |
| Founded: | 2168 |
| Major Sectors: | Bluespace Research
Data Farming Electronics Manufacture |
| Minor Sectors: | Food Delivery
Online Gambling |
| Affiliates: | UNIP |
| Rivals: | Idris Incorporated |
Founded in 2168 by an initial consortium of parties that stood to gain from exploiting the then theoretical bluespace, Nanotrasen has since become the leading name in Bluespace related research, applying it to computers and electronics of all varieties. While initially a research corporation tied to other, Earthly corporations, they have since shed their ties to such small-scale interests and become a megacorporation whose concerns affect the entire Orion Spur. Nowadays, they are part research giant, part manufacturing giant and full time entertainment extraordinaires.
What do they do?
This domination of communications and technology has given Nanotrasen a very lucrative business, one that was practically thrown into their laps: data harvesting. The company has servers established all over the Orion Spur for gathering seemingly random and assorted data from all of their services, processing it to look for patterns and then selling it to the highest bidder. Whether it be the purchasing habits of Biesellite males aged 18 to 23 or the activism and political beliefs of Himean immigrants, Nanotrasen has the important data to act upon ready for a price.
So what does a company do with the most ubiquitous electronics in the market and the best data to understand the psychology of consumerism do? Start an online gambling empire, naturally. Making use of research supported by Nanotrasen data gathering, in co-operation with Zeng-Hu psychologists, Nanotrasen controls a large portion of the online gambling market through a wide variety of websites covering every game of every planet and nation and species. The money that pays out on a human's blackjack win in Biesel could have come from a Tajaran's loss betting on the Velhalktai while sitting in a shuttle in Skrellian space. This massive share of the gambling market has drawn the ire of Idris, and regularly leads to lawsuits and counter-suits arguing over gambling technologies.
Further ingratiating themselves into a rivalry with Idris, Nanotrasen released an app onto any device with a Nanotrasen chip for ordering food from nearby "ghost-kitchen" restaurants to your door. Created after their merger with Getmore Food Company in 2398, the app is called "StellarBite™️" and can deliver the same recipe to anywhere in the Orion Spur assuming service reaches. Despite having no actual storefront, the expansive and regionalised menu is wildly popular with the general public and there are even online guides on fooling the app into giving you regional dishes when on other planets. Despite controversies over the payment of delivery drivers and the use of flying drones sometimes damaging meals in transit, the app remains a steadfast part of Biesel culture and stays firmly installed on almost every device sold by Nanotrasen to this day.
Data and investment give Nanotrasen one more major client: governments. Through acts of "philanthropy" and political favours to the correct candidates over the last circa 300 years, Nanotrasen has become a major power in UNIP politics, effectively being the entire reason that Biesel maintains its semi-autonomous status within the Protectorate and also the major force behind its extreme economic development. With so much money tied into Biesel, Nanotrasen has become an almost defacto government for the area, sometimes having even more power than the actual Biesellite government.
Corporate Culture
Despite being so long ago, Nanotrasen very much holds onto its research lab origins, believing that the next big breakthrough is what should define one's career. While the manufacturing and catering aspects of the company are relatively unaffected by this, and mostly just manifest this belief through a generic culture of achieving better numbers at one's station, every other aspect of the company genuinely believes that if their career does not result in a big change in how the company operates that they are a failure. This has resulted in a highly competitive work environment, in which it is common to see people stressing near the end of their contracts that they might not have achieved enough to be able to happily retire. At some levels of the company, there are humans in their eighties or even nineties still slaving away at research hoping to find their career defining breakthrough.
This culture of excellence could not be enforced, however, without a much darker side to it. While employees are almost entirely promoted on skill and their value to the company, that value is not only calculated by their work ethic or ability. Another way to pad an otherwise mediocre promotion opportunity is to show loyalty through action: reporting coworkers who have bad work ethic. Serving important data to supervisors, either through spying or trawling social media, as well as proving when a fellow employee is holding back important research data to gun for a promotion has helped to create an almost paranoid feeling within the labs of Nanotrasen.
The politics is not just coincidental. With Nanotrasen's fingers being in every pie in Biesel, their money is incredibly tied to one region of the Orion Spur. This means that any Biesel concern is a Nanotrasen concern, and Nanotrasen employees are given small amounts of stock to be worried for their portfolios if Biesel has any issue. As far as most employees see it, regardless of their nationality, Biesel's problem is their problem.
Relationships
United Nations Interstellar Protectorate
Nanotrasen is Biesel, and Biesel is Nanotrasen. When discussing Nanotrasen's relationship with the Protectorate, one would need only look at the amount of leverage they have been granted in Biesel, allowing The Protectorate to have an incredibly economically productive cash-cow to milk for their new and expanding ambitions. The existence of Biesel and its infinitely growing wealth has given Nanotrasen a highly positive, influential position with UNIP, and made their working relationship something symbiotic.
Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals
Being aligned in their shared fields of research, Nanotrasen and Zeng-Hu often make an effort to work together on large projects, especially ones of a mechanical and medical nature. Huge amounts of machinery that was designed with Zeng-Hu expertise is actually manufactured using Nanotrasen computers and Nanotrasen manufacturing plants. Where Zeng-Hu provides knowledge of the natural world, Nanotrasen bends it to its will in order to make their discoveries useful. Anti-corporate propaganda often makes use of drawings of the logos of these corporations kissing, insinuating the functional monopoly of their close co-operation.
Idris Incorporated
Idris and Nanotrasen's relationship is proof that two companies can be eternally suing one another and yet still survive. A rivalry like no other, Idris has never taken kindly to Nanotrasen encroaching on the markets that make up their entire existence, and has made extensive use of both their ballooned legal team and hostile policy influencing to try and run Nanotrasen out of prospective territories. Some people might describe their relationship as the longest slap-fight in human history, with both corporations even going so far as to sponsor rival sports teams out of pure spite.