IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 28, 2026--
Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc. announced that Alan Draper assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer effective April 1, 2026. A thirty-year industry veteran, Draper will lead Nippon Sanso Matheson’s U.S.-based business, which includes more than 300 locations nationwide and over 40 air separation units serving customers coast to coast.
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Draper assumes this role following a distinguished global career spanning nearly three decades in the industrial gases industry. He brings deep experience in executive leadership, operational stewardship, and financial discipline, with a strong track record of leading complex organizations across the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Most recently, Draper served in senior leadership roles within Nippon Sanso Holdings Corporation, including Senior Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, where he worked closely with operating companies worldwide to strengthen performance, governance, and strategic alignment. Earlier in his career, he spent more than two decades at Praxair, including serving as CFO of the formerly named Praxair Europe.
“Alan brings a clear strategic vision and a strong leadership mindset rooted in deep industrial gas experience,” said Nippon Sanso Holding Corp’s President CEO Hamada. “His ability to identify growth opportunities, translate regional success into global success, and lead organizations through change will allow the U.S. business to fully benefit from Nippon Sanso’s worldwide capabilities. His strong focus on innovation, customer partnership, and organizational excellence is well aligned with our commitment to creating social value through increased industrial productivity, enhanced human well-being, and a more sustainable future.”
As Chief Executive Officer, Alan will focus on reinforcing safety and reliability, strengthening operational execution, and advancing long-term growth in support of customers across electronics, industrial, medical and specialty gas markets, in addition to the carbonic products, HYCO and the over the fence supply of the On-Site businesses. He will also work closely with Nippon Sanso Holdings to further align Nippon Sanso Matheson’s strategy with the group’s global objectives.
“I am honored to lead a company with such a long history as an innovator and specialty gas leader in the United States, dating back to 1927,” said Draper. “Today, we are uniquely positioned to offer customers an exceptional breadth of engineered solutions, from food freezing technologies supported by our two in-house cryogenic freezer manufacturing facilities, to advanced solutions for semiconductor manufacturers through our advanced gas manufacturing capability, proprietary purification technologies and unique UHP gas conditioning equipment. Our reliable supply network has repeatedly demonstrated its value to our customers, even during times of economic disruption. We will continue to put safety and quality first in everything we do.”
About Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc.
Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc. is a single source for industrial, medical, specialty and electronic gases, gas delivery, gas conditioning and gas regulation equipment, carbonic products, and welding and safety supplies. Additionally, Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc. provides proprietary purification systems including NANOCHEM® which can purify various specialty gases to 99.99999999% levels, cryogenic food freezers which are engineered, designed and manufactured in-house to customer specific needs, inventory management systems, engineering and gas management services, and on-site gas generation with a mission to deliver innovative solutions for global customer requirements. For customers in need of large-scale supply of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, or both (HyCO or syngas), Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc. produces and supplies these gases Over-The-Fence (OTF) from on-site plants and/or via pipeline. Nippon Sanso Matheson, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Sanso Holdings Corporation, a global industrial gas leader operating in more than 30 countries.
Alan Draper, Chief Executive Officer of Nippon Sanso Matheson
BERLIN (AP) — Robot dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads modeled after world-renowned figures — including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso — can be seen roaming around a Berlin gallery, occasionally “pooing” printed images of their surroundings which they've previously captured with integrated cameras.
The animals are part of an interactive installation by American artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) currently showing at Berlin's New National Gallery.
Each printed image shows a snippet of reality transformed by AI to resemble the personality of the dog or, in other words, the worldview of the human figure on its shoulders (i.e., the Picasso dog will produce images in Cubist style and Warhol's in pop art).
It's a commentary on how our perceptions are shaped by algorithms and technology platforms, the organizers of the exhibition write in the description of the event.
“In the past, our view of the world was shaped in part by how artists saw the world,” Beeple told the AP. “How Picasso painted changed how we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, that changed how he saw those things.”
Now our view of the world is shaped by tech billionaires who own powerful algorithms that decide what we see and what we don’t see, the artist added.
“That's an immense amount of power that I don’t think we’ve fully understood, especially because when they want to make a change, they don’t need to lobby the U.N. They don’t need to get something through Congress or the EU, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”
The dogs also wear heads in Beeple’s own image.
Lisa Botti, the curator of the exhibition in Berlin, said that artificial intelligence was one of the phenomena most impacting our lives today and that “museums are the places where society can reflect” on such transformations, which is why she wanted to have Beeple’s work shown.
The work, entitled “Regular Animals,” was first first shown at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025.
Beeple is a graphic designer from South Carolina who does a variety of digital artwork. He is one of the founders of the “everyday” movement in 3D graphics: For years, he has been creating a picture every day and posting it online without missing a single day.
According to Christie's, he is the third most expensive living artist to sell at auction, after David Hockney and Jeff Koons.
In the spring of 2021, Christie’s opened bidding for Beeple's digital collage entitled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” with the sale ultimately closing at over $69 million. The auction house described the artwork as “critiques of modern society, the government and social media” in the form of “grotesque, dystopian futures, often featuring celebrities like Donald Trump and Kanye West.”
Christie’s said the sale marked the first time a major auction house offered a digital-only artwork with a non-fungible token as a guarantee of its authenticity, as well as the first time cryptocurrency has been used to pay for an artwork at auction.
Non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, are electronic identifiers confirming a digital collectible is real by recording the details on a digital ledger known as a blockchain. The tokens have swept the online collecting world recently, an offshoot of the boom in cryptocurrencies.
At the Art Basel 2025 event, Beeple gave away the photos pooed by his dogs to audience members, accompanied by a certificate that read “100% organic GMO-free dog shit.” Some prints had QR codes that gave access to free NFTs, which in practice meant Beeple was giving away his digital art for free for people (sometimes the subjects of the photos themselves) to potentially monetize.
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Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland.
Artist Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, poses inside his installation titled Regular Animals, with robots in the likeness of Elon Musk, left, Kim Jong Un, second left, Pablo Picasso, second right, and Andy Warhol, right, at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
From left: Robots in the likeness of Kim Jong Un, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Beeple, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso, displayed at the installation titled Regular Animals by the artist Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
A Robot in the likeness of Kim Jong Un displayed at the installation titled Regular Animals by artist Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Robots in the likeness of Elon Musk, foreground, and Jeff Bezos, left, are displayed at the installation titled Regular Animals by artist Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Artist Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, poses inside his installation titled Regular Animals, with robots in the likeness of Kim Jong Un, left, Elon Musk, second left, Kim Jong Un, Jeff Bezos, center, and Mark Zuckerberg, right, at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
