Hercules, Inc. was a chemical and munitions manufacturing company based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, incorporated in 1912 as the Hercules Powder Company following the breakup of the DuPont explosives monopoly by the U.S. Circuit Court in 1911. Hercules Powder Company became Hercules, Inc. in 1966, operating under this name until 2008, when it was merged into Ashland Inc.

An earlier Hercules Powder Company was formed in 1882 by DuPont and Laflin & Rand Powder Company. This company was dissolved on June 30, 1904.

Hercules was one of the major producers of smokeless powder for warfare in the United States during the 20th century. At the time of its spin-off, the DuPont Corp. retained the processes and patents for the production of "single-base" nitrocellulose gunpowders, whereas Hercules was given the patents and processes for the production of "double-base" gunpowders that combined nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine.

A special formulation of dynamite was patented in 1874 by J.W. Willard, superintendent of the California Powder Works in Santa Cruz, California. He called his invention "Hercules powder", a competitive jab at rival Giant Powder Company which had acquired the exclusive U.S. rights to Alfred Nobel's original dynamite formula. The mythological Hercules was known as a giant slayer.

The California Powder Works became the only manufacturer of Hercules powder. In 1877, J.W. Willard moved to Cleveland, Ohio to oversee the opening of a new California Powder Works plant there, dedicated to the manufacture of Hercules powder. In 1881, the California Powder Works moved its Hercules powder manufacturing in California to a new site along the northeast shore of San Francisco Bay. The company town that grew up around the facility became known as "Hercules", later (1900) incorporated as Hercules, California.

In 1882, thanks to their interlocking ownership interests with the California Powder Works by that time, the DuPont corporation and Laflin & Rand Powder Company acquired the rights to manufacture Hercules powder and incorporated the Hercules Powder Company for that purpose. In 1904, Du Pont dissolved the company as part of its ongoing effort to consolidate the many explosives manufacturers that it controlled under the Du Pont name.

In 1911, the United States won a lawsuit that it had brought against the Du Pont corporation under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. Circuit Court in Delaware found that Du Pont had been operating an unlawful monopoly, and ordered a breakup of its explosives and gunpowder manufacturing business. The breakup resulted in the creation of two new companies in 1912, Atlas Powder Company and Hercules Powder Company. Atlas received the explosives manufacturing portion of Du Pont's business (including the facilities acquired from the Giant Powder Company), while Hercules received the gunpowder portion.

The first management team of this new Hercules Powder Company included President H. Dunham, T.W. Bacchus, G.G. Rheuby, J.T Skelly, Norman Rood, Fred Stark, C.D. Prickett, and George Markell.