It’s a first for the annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list: a company ranks No. 1 for the second year in a row.
Perhaps not surprisingly, that company is OpenAI. More than any other startup in the 12-year history of the Disruptor 50 list, OpenAI’s disruptive impact and potential is unprecedented.
What sets the company and the AI revolution it is leading apart is that OpenAI does not work in opposition to incumbents, but rather as a partner to tech giants and other large companies . It serves as your ally to help you navigate and implement unprecedented changes, with new tools that can be customized for consumers and enterprise data sets.
OpenAI is not unique, but rather represents a generation of AI startups that are aligning themselves with the giants because of the computing power and massive funding required to accelerate the learning of artificial intelligence. In fact, 34 of this year’s 50 Disruptor companies describe AI as critically important to more than half of their revenue. Thirteen of them say that it is generative AI, in particular, that is of crucial importance to the majority of sales.
OpenAI tops the list for an unprecedented second year due to the company’s continued pace of innovation. Over the past year, OpenAI has grown dramatically, announcing a range of new products and services related to its GPT extended language model and commercial partnerships, as its consumer subscription option and a range of ‘s corporate licensing deals helped it generate $2 billion in revenue. annual revenue.
On Monday, OpenAI launched a new AI model and a desktop version of ChatGPT, along with an updated user interface. During a livestreamed event, Mira Murati, chief technology officer, said the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster,” with improved text, video and audio capabilities. “This is the first time we’ve really taken a big step forward in ease of use,” Murati said.
After a dramatic boardroom battle in November, in which CEO Sam Altman was ousted and then brought back days later after investor and employee outrage, the company has strengthened its board structure of directors and management, with Altman himself joining the board in March. The rush to rehire Altman and his team revealed the depth of corporate and venture capital support for the OpenAI CEO as an innovator and leader.
Then, in February, the company launched its Sora text-to-video generator (later in the year, an audio AI, Voice Engine, was also revealed in a limited test) and completed a funding round that valued the company at $80. billion, up from $29 billion reported when it was named No. 1 on the Disruptor 50 list in 2023.
Altman has positioned himself as a thought leader on AI regulation, having testified last year before Congress on the need for intelligent and careful AI guardrails. And the company is at the center of a swirl of concerns about artificial intelligence. OpenAI is facing regulatory scrutiny, with the FTC investigating whether it violated consumer protection laws and the SEC examining whether, during Altman’s brief ouster, investors were misled. In the meantime, the company has beefed up its legal team as it pursues a series of lawsuits, from publishing companies, including the New York Times, and individual artists, like author Jodi Picoult, for copyright infringement.
But at the same time, OpenAI struck new deals with IAC’s publisher, Meredith, parent company of Food & Wine and People, and the Financial Times, to pay them for use of their intellectual property and to redirect traffic to their content.
The AI wave extends to many sectors
This wave of AI innovation echoes the rise of the Internet at the turn of the century, as well as the mobile and cloud revolutions, but has some distinct characteristics. The current wave of AI disruptors, such as Databricks (No. 5 on this year’s list), Anthropic (No. 7), Scale AI (No. 12), Cohere (No. 30), AlphaSense (No. °40) and Glean (No. 43) is marked by a rapid pace of evolution, with the progress made each year by large language models, as well as their dependence on expensive chips and infrastructure.
Contrary to the garage-founding mythology that dominated the Googles and PayPals of previous tech cycles, these AI-focused companies need GPUs and data centers, which has led most of them to s ‘partner with giants ranging from Microsoft and Nvidia to Oracle, Salesforce, Amazon and Alphabet. As a result, we may not see as many new entrants into the AI sector as so-called Web 1.0 and 2.0, but successful companies, like those on our Disruptor 50 list, have the potential to be much more impactful and disruptive.
Companies in this year’s Disruptor 50 are using AI – and other key technologies, such as robotics and the cloud – across a wide range of industries.
Business technology is the most represented sector, with 14 companies on this year’s list, including Databricks and AlphaSense, which are using AI to increase efficiency and better leverage data in key industries like finance.
Fintech is the second best-represented sector, with 10 companies on this year’s list, including Brex (No. 4), Chime (No. 22) and Ramp (No. 32), which have integrated AI assistants to streamline interactions with consumers, generate suggestions and advice on effective business budgeting.
In healthcare and biotechnology, eight companies, including ElevateBio (No. 8), Generate Biomedicines (No. 25), and Spring Health (No. 45), are using AI to accelerate drug development and improve patient outcomes.
And we see AI powering the aerospace and defense industry. No. 2 on the list, Anduril, recently introduced new AI-powered drones and uses an AI-powered operating system to infuse autonomy into a range of defense and security systems.
Just as every business, regardless of industry, has become a technology company, soon every type of business will incorporate AI.
cnbc
