The largest companies in Boston: 30 headquarters ranked, from TJX to Revvity

This ranking is for readers who need Greater Boston's largest headquarters in order with figures they can check: job seekers, suppliers, investors and B2B sellers planning enterprise accounts. It covers SEC-registered public companies headquartered in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro, which includes Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Plymouth counties and two New Hampshire counties. For the city's largest employers and the full business count, see companies in Boston.

The 30 largest companies headquartered in the Boston area

Each row is from the company's latest annual report on Form 10-K: the head office on its cover, revenue as reported, and the headcount in its human capital section.

Headcounts are worldwide and use each filing's own definition; Bright Horizons' figure includes part-time and substitute staff. Global Partners' revenue is mostly fuel sales, so its $18.56 billion is large relative to its 4,700 employees. Alnylam ($3.714 billion) edges Cabot ($3.713 billion) for 22nd.

A wide list, not a tall one

The top three companies report 40.6% of the list's revenue, against 84% for the top three in Seattle. Greater Boston's corporate base is spread across seven industries:

Life sciences, counting tools, devices and drug makers together, is $100.6 billion across eight companies. That understates the cluster, because many of the region's biotech companies have no product on the market yet: they hire, lease lab space and buy equipment long before they appear on a revenue ranking.

Where they are

Eight of the 30 are in the city of Boston, seven of them in the Seaport and Back Bay: State Street, Wayfair, Vertex, American Tower, Toast, DraftKings, Cabot and BXP. PTC, on Seaport Boulevard, is just outside the list at 31st ($2.74 billion). Five are in Cambridge and four in Waltham; Wilmington, Marlborough and Billerica have two each; Framingham, Needham, Norwell, Newton, Andover and North Reading have one each. Iron Mountain, in Portsmouth, is the only New Hampshire company in the top 30.

Who isn't on the list, and why

Private companies are missing because they don't publish results. The City of Boston's own report notes that Fidelity Investments, one of its ten largest employers, reports employment by state rather than by city.

Fortune 500 companies in Boston

Fortune ranks by revenue too, so the companies at the top of this table are the region's Fortune 500 members, but it uses its own revenue definitions and fiscal-year cutoffs, and its counts are by metro area. Check Fortune's site for ranks and use this table for figures you can trace to a filing.

Selling to Boston's largest companies

The life sciences companies on this list buy differently from the retailers. Anything that touches a regulated manufacturing or lab process goes through quality assurance as well as procurement, and suppliers should expect an audit, a quality agreement and validation documentation before the first purchase order. Retailers such as TJX and BJ's buy at enormous scale with strict cost targets and plan around fiscal years that end in late January.

Illustrative example. The seller and its figures are fictional; the company figures are from the table.

Mystic Validation (mysticvalidation.example) validates laboratory and manufacturing software for regulated companies and wants the eight life sciences companies in the top 30.

• Thermo Fisher, Boston Scientific, Charles River, Bruker, Revvity, Vertex, Biogen and Alnylam reported $100.6 billion in combined revenue and employ about 242,000 people.
• An average engagement is worth $350,000, so two wins in a year would add $700,000.
• It starts with the head of quality systems or computer system validation at each, then the IT leader for the lab or manufacturing systems being replaced.

Bebop can find the quality and validation leaders at each of the eight and draft outreach that reflects what each says about its manufacturing in its 10-K.

Subject: Validation for [Company]'s [system] rollout

Hi [first name],

[Company]'s 10-K describes [new manufacturing capacity / a new lab platform] coming online. The validation package is usually what sets the go-live date.

We validate lab and manufacturing software for Boston-area drug and device makers, with documentation your auditors already know how to read. Would a sample validation plan for a system like yours be useful?

[Your name], Mystic Validation

Next step: prepare for accounts like these with enterprise account research.