The majority of companies on the 12th annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list describe AI as"critical" to their business.
Venture capital flooded into AI over the past year, but it's investments by public giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet into AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic that stand out most.claim that artificial intelligence is"critical" to their businesses. These include companies in industries ranging from cybersecurity to agriculture. Thirteen of the 2024 Disruptors call themselves"generative AI companies," including five of the top ten on this year's list.
The willingness of incumbent giants to invest in these private disruptors also means that many of the companies on the 2024 Disruptor 50 list can afford to wait to go public, even as a long-closed IPO window starts to open. We expect the first-time and second-time Disruptors to be in the mix for many lists to come.
Quantitative metrics included company-submitted data on workforce size and diversity, scalability, and sales and user growth. Some of this information has been kept off the record and was used for scoring purposes only. CNBC also brought in data from a pair of outside partners — PitchBook, which provided data on fundraising, implied valuations and investor quality; and, whose database of industry reports we use to compare the companies based on the industries they are attempting to disrupt.