No innovation has had a greater cultural impact and no technology product has made a bigger splash in the past six months than OpenAI‘s ChatGPT.
The Microsoft-backed startup’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot wowed consumers when it debuted at the end of November. It revealed a quantum leap in the ability of humans to seamlessly interact with AI, which in turn can access the entire information universe of the internet.
AI is having its iPhone moment. Apple’s breakthrough product sparked the invention of a new ecosystem of apps bringing users new services, ranging from Uber to Instagram, because suddenly they had a computer in their pocket. Coinciding with that mobile revolution was a computing one as well, with exponential power to shift data into the cloud.
Now we’re seeing a similar technological boom around AI. It’s not just about the startling experience of interacting with the latest chatbots. AI will influence, disrupt and accelerate every industry. In fact, it’s already happening.
With OpenAI topping this year’s Disruptor 50 list, there’s no question that the dominant theme not just for the annual ranking but for the venture-backed tech startup space as a whole is artificial intelligence.
And it’s not just companies that have AI at their core. We’re seeing a range of enterprise applications for AI to drive efficiency and new capabilities across companies and sectors of the market. Of the 50 companies on this year’s list, 21 told us that AI is critically important to more than 50% of their revenue.
Half of the companies in the top 10 of the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list feature key use of AI, and notably, they represent a diverse range of industries and use cases. Canva, the No. 3 company, is integrating ChatGPT into its design tools, giving customers a new way to be creative. No. 4 Disruptor Relativity Space is using AI to make 3D-printed rockets. No. 7 Disruptor Anduril Industries deploys AI to identify and attack security threats. U.K.-based renewable energy company Octopus Energy, No. 8 on this year’s list, uses AI to efficiently match energy supply and demand. No. 9 Lineage Logistics uses AI to optimize the movement of goods across the temperature-controlled supply chain.
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“I do think we are deep into a new technological wave and this is, I think, the biggest one in a while,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with CNBC late last week.
No. 19 on the Disruptor 50 list, Scale AI, has worked with companies including OpenAI to label the massive amounts of data — images, text, voice and video — that the machines need to digest to become better learners. Also on the list is the No. 44 Disruptor, Cohere, which was founded by former Google Brain researchers who helped develop a new method of natural language processing — transformers — that enable systems to grasp a word’s context more accurately.
Altman said OpenAI is seeing artificial intelligence affect nearly every industry. He pointed to the legal profession as a prime example.
“What we’re hearing from customers using our API for legal companies is that it is totally transforming the way they work and the efficiency that any one lawyer can achieve and the accuracy, freeing people up to do more of what they do really well, and having this new tool to sort of give them as much leverage as possible,” Altman said.
“That is a pattern we’re seeing again and again in many industries, and I’m super excited about it,” he said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a keynote address announcing ChatGPT integration for Bing at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, Feb. 7, 2023.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Its ability to make stock market investors skittish became clear when Alphabet‘s shares tanked after the rollout — which some employees called rushed — of its ChatGPT competitor, Bard, earlier this year. And in one of the sectors seen as being most acutely at risk from generative AI, education, Chegg saw its shares fall by close to half just because its CEO referenced an impact from ChatGPT on customer growth during its recent earnings call.
For now, OpenAI has a dual revenue stream: an enterprise software model where it charges companies for access to the platform, and a premium chat app it offers to consumers for $20 monthly, in addition to the free version.
“For now, we’re pretty happy with these two models. We’re super open to explain other things,” Altman said, “you know, when we’re very much at the very start of this technology.”
OpenAI’s business customers include Salesforce, Snapchat, and its backer Microsoft, which is bringing OpenAI’s generative AI technologies to its Bing and Edge internet browsers and Microsoft 365 suite of business software, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
Microsoft’s cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion, and the startup’s valuation is reported to be as high as $29 billion. The company declined to provide any funding or valuation data.
The growth in the power of AI has been so rapid and dramatic it has sparked concern from politicians and regulators. Those looking to play in the space — including Elon Musk, who was an early co-founder of OpenAI and now says he will launch a competitor — are also speaking out about the risks. Musk, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and a range of professors and CEOs, signed an open letter in March from the Future of Life Institute, urging AI labs to stop training models that are more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Altman first responded in an appearance at a virtual event at MIT, saying that consistent safety guidelines were needed but that this proposed pause was “missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause.”
Altman continues to advocate for regulation. “We really need regulation here. We’ve been calling for it since the start of the company,” he said. “I think we’re going to get some regulation, and we’ll get more over time. And I think that’s really critically important. So I’m happy that it’s happening.”
“I think to get to the future where we have as much of the good use of AI and minimize the what could be quite bad uses of AI,” Altman said, “there’s just no way around having regulation here. We have regulation for other industries with much less powerful technology. So we should definitely have it here.”
Reid Hoffman, partner at venture capital firm Greylock, was an early investor in OpenAI and is now an investor in a number of AI companies and the co-founder of AI startup Inflection. He said he finds some of the criticism to be more dangerous than OpenAI.
“A bunch of it is well-intentioned; there are a bunch of different ways AI can play out,” said Hoffman, who is also on the Microsoft board of directors and had served on the OpenAI board before stepping down due to potential conflicts of interest. “Some of it is less well intentioned: ‘Everyone else, slow down so I can speed up.’ And this is one of those things where it is overall a mistaken effort. … The call to slow down is, in fact, less safe than what they’re proposing,” he said, referring to OpenAI and Altman.
In addition to concerns about AI being used to manipulate or mislead, Altman said he is working to tamp down on bias within OpenAI’s systems.
“A big part of that is what we call RLHF, or reinforcement learning from human feedback, where we take these models that are pretrained on a significant fraction of the internet and we can sort of push them in certain ways,” Altman said. “We can teach the models like, ‘Hey, there’s a bias here in the data. You shouldn’t act this way.'” He said that from GPT-3 to GPT-4 the company has been able to make great strides in reducing bias in the model.
As companies including OpenAI battle bias and push for smart regulation, they’re also working with the established tech behemoths, such as Microsoft, and leaders in all sorts of industries to help them evolve, so they’re not disrupted.
A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.
Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In an earnings call this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased an expansion of his company’s fledgling robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area and other U.S. markets.
But California regulators are making clear that Tesla is not authorized to carry passengers on public roads in autonomous vehicles and would require a human driver in control at all times.
“Tesla is not allowed to test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in an AV with or without a driver,” the California Public Utilities Commission told CNBC in an email on Friday. “Tesla is allowed to transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-AV, which, of course, would have a driver.”
In other words, Tesla’s service in the state will have to be more taxi than robot.
Tesla has what’s known in California as a charter-party carrier permit, which allows it to run a private car service with human drivers, similar to limousine companies or sightseeing services.
The commission said it received a notification from Tesla on Thursday that the company plans to “extend operations” under its permit to “offer service to friends and family of employees and to select members of the public,” across much of the Bay Area.
But under Tesla’s permit, that service can only be with non-AVs, the CPUC said.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC that Tesla has had a “drivered testing permit” since 2014, allowing the company to operate AVs with a safety driver present, but not to collect fees. The safety drivers must be Tesla employees, contractors or designees of the manufacturer under that permit, the DMV said.
In Austin, Texas, Tesla is currently testing out a robotaxi service, using its Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest automated driving software and hardware. The limited service operates during daylight hours and in good weather, on roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour.
Robotaxis in Austin are remotely supervised by Tesla employees, and include a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.”
On Friday, Business Insider, citing an internal Tesla memo, reported that Tesla told staff it planned to expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on that report.
In a separate matter in California, the DMV has accused Tesla of misleading consumers about the capabilities of its driver assistance systems, previously marketed under the names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD).
Tesla now calls its premium driver assistance features, “FSD Supervised.” In owners manuals, Tesla says Autopilot and FSD Supervised are “hands on” systems, requiring a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times.
But in user-generated videos shared by Tesla on X, the company shows customers using FSD hands-free while engaged in other tasks. The DMV is arguing that Tesla’s license to sell vehicles in California should be suspended, with arguments ongoing through Friday at the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings in Oakland.
Under California state law, autonomous taxi services are regulated at the state level. Some city and county officials said on Friday that they were out of the loop regarding a potential Tesla service in the state.
Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview that she had not heard from Tesla about its plans. She urged the company to be more transparent.
“I certainly expect they will tell us and I think it’s a good business practice to do that,” she said.
Moulton-Peters said she was undecided on robotaxis generally and wasn’t sure how Marin County, located north of San Francisco, would react to Tesla’s service.
“The news of change coming always has mixed results in the community,” she said.
Brian Colbert, another member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview that he’s open to the idea of Tesla’s service being a good thing but that he was disappointed in the lack of communication.
“They should have done a better job about informing the community about the launch,” he said.
Alphabet’s Waymo, which is far ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi market, obtained a number of permits from the DMV and CPUC before starting its driverless ride-hailing service in the state.
Waymo was granted a CPUC driverless deployment permit in 2023, allowing it to charge for rides in the state. The company has been seeking amendments to both its DMV and CPUC driverless deployment permits as it expands its service territory in the state.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers.
Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.
“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”
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In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.
Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.
The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.
“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaks on a panel titled Power, Purpose, and the New American Century at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Palantir has hit another major milestone in its meteoric stock rise. It’s now one of the 20 most valuable U.S. companies.
The provider of software and data analytics technology to defense agencies saw its stock rise more than 2% on Friday to another record, lifting the company’s market cap to $375 billion, which puts it ahead of Home Depot and Procter & Gamble. The company’s market value was already higher than Bank of America and Coca-Cola.
Palantir has more than doubled in value this year as investors ramp up bets on the company’s artificial intelligence business and closer ties to the U.S. government. Since its founding in 2003 by Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp and others, the company has steadily accrued a growing list of customers.
Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business increased 45% to $373 million in its most recent quarter, while total sales rose 39% to $884 million. The company next reports results on Aug. 4.
Buying the stock at these levels requires investors to pay hefty multiples. Palantir currently trades for 273 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. The only other company in the top 20 with a triple-digit ratio is Tesla at 175.
With $3.1 billion in total revenue over the past year, Palantir is a fraction the size of the next smallest company by sales among the top 20 by market cap. Mastercard, which is valued at $518 billion, is closest with sales over the past four quarters of roughly $29 billion.