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Persephone Kavallines

Welcome to Disruptor 50 in the age of AI.

A whopping 34 of the 50 companies on our twelfth annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list 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.

These companies are upending the classical definition of disruptive innovation that shaped the creation of the Disruptor 50 list more than a decade ago. Mostly gone from the 2024 list is the idea of a better, cheaper innovation. Instead, achieving disruptive innovation with AI requires massive piles of capital investment, inevitably leading to close partnership with the incumbent giants.

Instead of Amazon disruptor Anthropic (which debuts on the 2024 Disruptor 50 List at No. 7), we have “Amazon-backed Anthropic,” which also received a $2 billion investment from Alphabet and is taking on “Microsoft-backed OpenAI” (No. 1 on the list for the second straight year).

More coverage of the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50

The venture capital community also has been investing heavy amounts of cash in any startup that can claim it’s part of the AI revolution. More than $90 billion flowed to AI startups in 2023, according to PitchBook. Among the Disruptors, 17 have raised new funds in the past year. That includes 8 of the 13 generative AI startups, which raised a total of at least $5.5 billion combined.

In all, the 2024 Disruptors have raised $70 billion — a comeback from last year’s $54 billion demonstrating the power of AI — at a total implied valuation of $436 billion, the second-highest valuation ever for the list of 2022’s $500 billion.

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. 

Here’s how we chose them in 2024:  

All private, independently owned startup companies founded after Jan. 1, 2009, were eligible to be nominated for the Disruptor 50 list. Companies nominated were required to submit a detailed analysis, including key quantitative and qualitative information. 

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 IBISWorld, whose database of industry reports we use to compare the companies based on the industries they are attempting to disrupt. 

CNBC’s Disruptor 50 Advisory Board — a group of 50 leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship from around the world, then ranked the quantitative criteria by importance and ability to disrupt established industries and public companies. This year, the board again found that scalability and user growth were the most important criteria, followed by sales growth and use of breakthrough technologies (including, most commonly, artificial intelligence and machine learning). These categories received the highest weighting, but the ranking model is designed to ensure that companies must score highly on a wide range of criteria to make the final list. 

Companies were also asked to submit important qualitative information, including descriptions of their core business model, ideal customers and recent company milestones. A team of CNBC editorial staff, including TV anchors, reporters and producers, and CNBC.com writers and editors, along with many members of the Advisory Board, read the submissions and provided holistic qualitative assessments of each company. 

New for 2024, CNBC formed a Disruptor 50 VC Advisory Board, in an effort to leverage the valuable expertise of leading venture capital firms and investors. Each member of this new board assessed a small group of finalists as an additional component of the qualitative review. Importantly, these VCs were not permitted to provide an assessment of any company in their firm’s own portfolios.

In the final stage of the process, total qualitative scores were combined with a weighted quantitative score to determine which 50 companies made the list and in what order. 

It’s our twelfth year, but we still see some “firsts” on this year’s list.

OpenAI is the first company to reach No. 1 in consecutive years, and just the second company to top the list more than once (SpaceX, No. 1 in 2014 and 2018, is the other). OpenAI exemplifies what it means to scale quickly and continue to innovate as it grows, and it remains the world’s most influential and powerful venture backed startup.

And this year features the first ten-time Disruptor in Stripe. The No. 1 Disruptor of 2020 has continued to innovate even as its valuation has been slashed while staying out of the IPO market. The tenth time will be the last time, however. Whether it goes public or stays private, Stripe will “age out” of Disruptor eligibility next year.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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