John Flannery, Immelt's replacement in 2017, further divested General Electric's assets in locomotives and lighting in order to focus the company more on aviation.

Ultimately, GE's final CEO Larry Culp[17] announced in November 2021 that General Electric was to be broken up into three separate, public companies by 2024.

[27] In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average,[28] where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.

[33] In 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of television broadcast reception at his General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Road in Schenectady, New York.

The project took longer than expected and was not a major commercial success, but it demonstrated concepts such as single-level storage, dynamic linking, hierarchical file system, and ring-oriented security.

In 2004, GE completed the spin-off of most of its mortgage and life insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia.

[82] In August 2010, GE Healthcare signed a strategic partnership to bring cardiovascular Computed Tomography (CT) technology from start-up Arineta Ltd. of Israel to the hospital market.

[94] In April 2014, it was announced that GE was in talks to acquire the global power division of French engineering group Alstom for a figure of around $13 billion.

It supports the company's finance/accounting, human resources, information technology, supply chain, legal and commercial operations, and is one of GE's four multifunctional shared services centers worldwide in Pudong, China; Budapest, Hungary; and Monterrey, Mexico.

[99] In April 2015, GE announced its intention to sell off its property portfolio, worth $26.5 billion, to Wells Fargo and The Blackstone Group.

[100] It was announced in April 2015 that GE would sell most of its finance unit and return around $90 billion to shareholders as the firm looked to trim down on its holdings and rid itself of its image of a "hybrid" company, working in both banking and manufacturing.

[175] In 1959, General Electric was accused of promoting the largest illegal cartel in the United States since the adoption of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 in order to maintain artificially high prices.

GE is one of the biggest players in the wind power industry and is developing environment-friendly products such as hybrid locomotives, desalination and water reuse solutions, and photovoltaic cells.

[187] In July 2010, GE agreed to pay $23.4 million to settle an SEC complaint without admitting or denying the allegations that two of its subsidiaries bribed Iraqi government officials to win contracts under the U.N. oil-for-food program between 2002 and 2003.

[188] In February 2017, GE announced that the company intends to close the gender gap by promising to hire and place 20,000 women in technical roles by 2020.

[191] As of October 2018[update], John L. Flannery was replaced by H. Lawrence "Larry" Culp Jr. as chairman and CEO, in a unanimous vote of the GE Board of Directors.

[196] CEO Jeff Immelt had a set of changes in the presentation of the brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE.

[206] As of August 2015[update] GE is planning to set up a silicon carbide chip packaging R&D center in coalition with SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York.

[216] General Electric Company reported Total CO2e emissions (direct + indirect) for the twelve months ending 31 December 2020 at 2,080 Kt (-310 /-13% y-o-y).

Du Pont de Nemours & Co., United States Steel Corp., and ConocoPhillips), with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 tons) of toxic chemicals released into the air.

[226] In 1999, the company agreed to pay a $250 million settlement in connection with claims it polluted the Housatonic River (at Pittsfield, Massachusetts) and other sites with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances.

[238][239] The highest concentrations of PCBs in the Housatonic River are found in Woods Pond in Lenox, Massachusetts, just south of Pittsfield, where they have been measured up to 110 mg/kg in the sediment.

[246] The electric car led to the production shortly after of the cutting-edge technology of the first commercially produced all-electric Elec-Trak garden tractor, which was manufactured from around 1969 until 1975.

[249] In May 2005, GE announced the launch of a program called "Ecomagination", intended, in the words of CEO Jeff Immelt, "to develop tomorrow's solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger durable materials, efficient lighting, and water purification technology".

[250] The announcement prompted an op-ed piece in The New York Times to observe that, "while General Electric's increased emphasis on clean technology will probably result in improved products and benefit its bottom line, Mr. Immelt's credibility as a spokesman on national environmental policy is fatally flawed because of his company's intransigence in cleaning up its own toxic legacy.

[259] Between September 2011 and April 2013, GE ran a content marketing campaign dedicated to telling the stories of "innovators—people who are reshaping the world through act or invention."

Stories included breakthroughs in Slingshot (water vapor distillation system), cancer research, energy production, pain management, and food access.

[262] In January 2017, GE signed an estimated $7 million deal with the Boston Celtics to have its corporate logo put on the NBA team's jersey.

A number of his novels and stories (notably Cat's Cradle and Player Piano) refer to the fictional city of Ilium, which appears to be loosely based on Schenectady, New York.

[268] GE was the primary focus of a 1991 short subject Academy Award-winning documentary, Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment,[269] that juxtaposed GE's "We Bring Good Things To Life" commercials with the true stories of workers and neighbors whose lives have been affected by the company's activities involving nuclear weapons.