CNBC is now accepting nominations for the 2024 Disruptor 50 list — our annual look at the most innovative venture-backed companies using breakthrough technology to meet increasing economic and consumer challenges.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, Feb. 16 at 11:59 pm EST.
All independent, privately-owned companies founded after Jan. 1, 2009, are eligible, and any company founder or executive, investor in the company, or any of their communications representatives can access and submit an application.
The companies named to last year’s Disruptor 50 list continue to face a challenging environment as we head toward 2024, with high interest rates tightening the supply of venture capital and keeping the IPO window mostly closed for venture-backed startups for the second straight year. A notable past Disruptor 50 company that made it to the public market this year, Instacart, has failed to maintain its IPO pricing.
The third quarter was the lowest for venture deals in the last six years, according to PitchBook, with U.S. venture capital fundraising on pace to set a nine-year low in 2023. In addition, the number of “down rounds,” or instances when companies raise funds at a lower valuation compared to a previous round of funding, are at a ten-year high, with more than a quarter of fundraising rounds completed this year happening at a flat or reduced valuation.
Business failures, too, have occurred for formerly high-flying, high-profile backed Disruptor 50 companies, including Convoy and WeWork. But the tighter funding environment doesn’t seem to be stopping entrepreneurs from starting new companies. Business formation is on pace to set a new record in 2023, breaking the mark set in 2021. New business formation surged immediately after the Covid-19 pandemic, and as those businesses begin to mature, we expect to see more of them find their way into the ranks of the Disruptor 50.
This is especially true of companies involved in the booming AI hype cycle sparked by 2023’s top Disruptor 50 company, OpenAI, just over a year ago. New investment in biotech also continues to buck the tighter VC environment.
Nominees will be put through a comprehensive and rigorous process of researching and scoring across a wide range of quantitative and qualitative criteria, including scalability, revenue and user growth, use of breakthrough technology, as well as workforce diversity.
An advisory board made up of leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship will provide weighting for the quantitative criteria, while a team of CNBC editorial staff will read submissions and provide qualitative assessments of every single nominee.
2024 honorees will be notified in April, and the list will be released in May across CNBC’s TV and digital platforms.
Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at prior list-making companies and the founders driving innovation.
Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected
Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.
CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.
CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.
In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.
CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.
A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.
Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) invites Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to speak in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, the White House’s Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
“Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt, the White House’s spokesperson.
“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she continued.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had negotiated a deal with Nvidia in which the U.S. government approves export licenses for the China-specific H20 AI chip in exchange for a 15% cut of revenue. Advanced Micro Devices also got licenses approved in exchange for a proportion of its China sales, the White House confirmed.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said Monday.
“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement this week.
Trump said the export licenses for AMD and Nvidia were a done deal. But lawyers and experts who follow trade have warned that Trump’s deal may be complicated because of existing laws that regulate how the government can charge fees for export licenses.
The Commerce Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The H20 is Nvidia’s Chinese-specific chip that is slowed down on purpose to comply with U.S. export relations. It’s related to the H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S., and was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on artificial intelligence chips in 2023.
Earlier this year, Nvidia said that it was on track to sell more than $8 billion worth of H20 chips in a single quarter before the Trump administration in April said that it would require a license to export the chip.
Trump signaled in July that he was likely to approve export licenses for the chip after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the White House.
The U.S. regulates AI chips like those made by Nvidia for national security reasons, saying that they could be used by the Chinese government to leapfrog U.S. capabilities in AI, or they could be used by the Chinese military or linked groups.
The Chinese government has been encouraging local companies in recent weeks to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips for any government or national security-related work, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum attend the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
China has told companies to refrain from using Nvidia‘s H20 chips after the chipmaker recently received approval to resume shipping the less advanced artificial intelligence product, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Authorities have recently told companies to avoid using the Nvidia chips, or those from Advanced Micro Devices, for government and national security use cases, according to the news outlet.
The report comes after the White House confirmed on Monday that both Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give 15% of all China revenues to the U.S. government.
Last month, both companies said they would soon resume China shipments after the administration started requiring export licenses earlier this year. Both Nvidia’s H20 chip and AMD’s MI380 were created to work around previous AI chip restrictions to China due to national security fears.
Shares of both stocks teetered on Tuesday.
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During a press conference Monday, Trump called Nvidia’s H20 chip “obsolete” and said he wouldn’t allow the higher-end Blackwell shipments there without 30% to 50% decrease in performance.
China is a key market for AI chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD.
Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said getting pushed out of the China market would be a “tremendous loss” for the company. He estimated the country’s AI market will hit $50 billion over the next two to three years.
Over the weekend, a social media account connected to Chinese state media said that the H20 chips were not “safe.”