Why OpenAI is the first company to be No. 1 on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list two years in a row
Persephone Kavallines
It’s a first for the annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list: a company landing at No. 1 for the second year in a row.
Perhaps no surprise, 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 unparalleled.
What’s distinct about the company and the AI revolution it’s leading is that OpenAI is not working in opposition to incumbents but rather as a partner to tech giants and other large corporations. It’s serving as an ally to help 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 aligned with the giants because of the compute power, and the massive funding, required to accelerate artificial intelligence learning. In fact, 34 of this year’s Disruptor 50 companies describe AI as critically important to more than half of their revenue. Thirteen say that it is generative AI, specifically, that is critically important to the majority of sales.
OpenAI topped the list for an unprecedented second year due to the company’s ongoing pace of innovation. In the past year, OpenAI has grown dramatically, announcing a range of new products and services related to its GPT large language model and business partnerships, as its consumer subscription option and a range of enterprise licensing deals have helped it generate a reported $2 billion in annual revenue.
On Monday, OpenAI launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with an updated user interface. In a livestream event, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati said the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster,” with improved capabilities in text, video and audio. “This is the first time that we are really making a huge step forward when it comes to the ease of use,” Murati said.
After a dramatic boardroom battle in November, in which CEO Sam Altman was ousted and then just a few days later brought back after outrage from investors and employees, the company strengthened its board and management structure, with Altman himself rejoining the board in March. The scramble 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 debuted its text-to-video generator Sora (later in the year, an audio AI, Voice Engine, was also unveiled in a limited test) and it completed a funding round that valued the company at a reported $80 billion, up from a reported $29 billion at the time it was named No. 1 on the Disruptor 50 list in 2023.
Altman has positioned himself as a thought leader in terms of AI regulation, after testifying last year before Congress about the need for smart and careful AI guardrails. And the company is at the center of a maelstrom of concern about artificial intelligence. OpenAI is the focus of regulatory scrutiny, with the FTC probing whether it broke consumer protection laws and the SEC looking at whether, during Altman’s brief ouster, investors were misled. Meanwhile, the company has beefed up its legal team as it fights a range of lawsuits, from publishing companies, including The New York Times, and individual artists, such as author Jodi Picoult, suing over copyright violation.
But at the same time, OpenAI has struck new deals with IAC’s publisher Meredith, parent of Food & Wine and People, and the Financial Times, to compensate them for the use of their IP, and to drive traffic back to their content.
AI’s wave extends to many industries
This wave of AI innovation echoes that of the rise of the internet around the turn of the century, and 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 change, with the progress made every year by large language models, as well as by their reliance on costly chips and infrastructure.
Unlike the founded-in-a-garage mythology that dominated the Googles and PayPals of prior tech cycles, these AI-driven companies need GPUs and data centers, which has led most of them to 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 the companies that do succeed, like those on our Disruptor 50 list, have the potential to be far more impactful and disruptive.
This year’s Disruptor 50 companies are using AI — and other key technologies, such as robotics and the cloud — across a wide range of industries.
Enterprise tech is the best-represented sector, with 14 companies on this year’s list, including Databricks and AlphaSense, which are using AI to drive efficiencies and better mine data across 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 consumer interactions, generate suggestions and advise on efficient corporate budgeting.
In the health-care and biotech space, there are eight companies, including ElevateBio (No. 8), Generate Biomedicines (No. 25) and Spring Health (No. 45), using AI to accelerate drug development and improve patient outcomes.
And we’re seeing AI power 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 company, regardless of its industry, has become a tech company, pretty soon, every type of company will integrate AI.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., left, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president at the 2025 VivaTech conference in Paris, France, on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang has been on a tour of Europe this week, bringing excitement and intrigue to everywhere he visited.
His message was clear — Nvidia is the company that can help Europe build its artificial intelligence infrastructure so the region can take control of its own destiny with the transformative technology.
I’ve been in London and Paris this week following Huang around as he met with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, journalists, fans, analysts and gave a keynote at Nvidia’s GTC event in the capital of France.
Here’s the what I saw and the key things I learned.
The draw of Huang is huge
Huang is truly the current rockstar of the tech world.
At London Tech Week, the lines were long and the auditorium packed to hear him speak.
The GTC event in Paris was full too. It was like going to a music concert or sporting event. There were GTC Paris T-shirts on the back of every chair and even a merchandise store.
Nvidia GTC in Paris on 11 June 2025
Arjun Kharpal
The aura of Huang really struck me when, after a question-and-answer session with him and a room full of attendees, most people lined up to take pictures or selfies with him.
Macron and Starmer both wanted to be seen on stage with him.
Nvidia positions itself as Europe’s AI hope
Nvidia’s key product is its graphics processing units (GPU) that are used to train and execute AI applications.
But Huang has positioned Nvidia as more than a chip company. During the week, he described Nvidia as an infrastructure firm. He also said AI should be seen as infrastructure like electricity.
His pitch to all countries was that Nvidia could be the company that will help countries build out that infrastructure.
“We believe that in order to compete, in order to build a meaningful ecosystem, Europe needs to come together and build capacity that is joint,” Huang said during a speech at the Viva Tech conference in Paris on Wednesday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
One of the most significant partnerships announced this week is between French startup Mistral and Nvidia to build a so-called AI cloud using the latter’s GPUs.
Huang spoke a lot during the week about “sovereign AI” — the concept of building data centers within a country’s borders that services its population rather than relying on servers located overseas. Among European policymakers and companies, this has been an important topic.
Huang also heaped praise on the U.K., France and Europe more broadly when it came to their potential in the AI industry.
China still behind but catching up
On Thursday, Huang decided to do a tour of Nvidia’s booth and I managed to catch him to get a few words on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
A key topic of that discussion was China. Nvidia has not been able to sell its most advanced chips to China because of U.S. export controls and even less sophisticated semiconductors are being blocked. In its last quarterly results, Nvidia took a $4.5 billion hit on unsold inventory.
I asked Huang about how China was progressing with AI chips, in particular referencing Huawei, the Chinese tech giant that is trying to make semiconductor products to rival Nvidia.
Huang said Huawei is a generation behind Nvidia. But because there is lots of energy in China, Huawei can just use more chips to get results.
“If the United States doesn’t want to partake, participate in China, Huawei has got China covered, and Huawei has got everybody else covered,” Huang said.
In addition, Huang is concerned about the strategic importance of U.S. companies not having access to China.
“It’s even more important that the American technology stack is what AI developers around the world build on,” Huang said.
Just reading between the lines somewhat — Huang sees a world where Chinese AI tech advances. Some countries may decide to build their AI infrastructure with Chinese companies rather than American. That in turn could give Chinese companies a chance to be in the AI race.
Quantum, robotics and driverless is the future
Huang often uses public appearances to talk about the future.
I asked him about some of those areas he’s bullish on like robotics and driverless cars, technology that Nvidia’s products can power.
Huang told me this will be the “decade of” autonomous vehicles and robotics.
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang delivers a speech on stage talking about robotics.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
During his keynote at GTC Paris on Wednesday, he also address quantum computing, saying the technology is reaching “an inflection point.”
Quantum computers are widely believed to be able to solve complex problems that classic computers can’t. This could include things like discovering new drugs or materials.
In an aerial view, a Tesla showroom at 12845 N. US 183 Highway Service Road is seen after police were called for a suspicious device in Austin, Texas, on March 24, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
With Elon Musk looking to June 22 as his tentative start date for Tesla’s pilot robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, protesters are voicing their opposition.
Public safety advocates and political protesters, upset with Musk’s work with the Trump administration, joined together in downtown Austin on Thursday to express their concerns about the robotaxi launch. Members of the Dawn Project, Tesla Takedown and Resist Austin say that Tesla’s partially automated driving systems have safety problems.
Tesla sells its cars with a standard Autopilot package, or a premium Full Self-Driving option (also known as FSD or FSD supervised), in the U.S. Automobiles with these systems, which include features like automatic lane keeping, steering and parking, have been involved in dozens of collisions, some fatal, according to data tracked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Tesla’s robotaxis, which Musk showed off in a video clip on X earlier this week, are new versions of the company’s popular Model Y vehicles, equipped with a future release of Tesla’s FSD software. That “unsupervised” FSD, or robotaxi technology, is not yet available to the public.
Tesla critics with The Dawn Project, which calls itself a tech-safety and security education business, brought a version of Model Y with relatively recent FSD software (version 2025.14.9) to show residents of Austin how it works.
In their demonstration on Thursday, they showed how a Tesla with FSD engaged zoomed past a school bus with a stop sign held out and ran over a child-sized mannequin that they put in front of the vehicle.
Dawn Project CEO Dan O’Dowd also runs Green Hills Software, which sells technology to Tesla competitors, including Ford and Toyota.
Stephanie Gomez, who attended the demonstration, told CNBC that she didn’t like the role Musk had been playing in the government. Additionally, she said she has no confidence in Tesla’s safety standards and said there’s been a lack of transparency from Tesla regarding how its robotaxis will work.
Another protester, Silvia Revelis, said she also opposed Musk’s political activity, but that safety is the biggest concern.
“Citizens have not been able to get safety testing results,” she said. “Musk believes he’s above the law.”
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— Todd Wiseman contributed to this report.
WATCH: Tesla’s next leg up is $400
23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 10, 2025.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and former CEO of 23andMe, has regained control over the embattled genetic testing company after her new nonprofit, TTAM Research Institute, outbid Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the company announced Friday.
TTAM will acquire substantially all of 23andMe’s assets for $305 million, including its Personal Genome Service and Research Services business lines as well as telehealth subsidiary Lemonaid Health. It’s a big win for Wojcicki, who stepped down from her role as CEO when 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March.
Last month, Regeneron announced it would purchase most of 23andMe’s assets for $256 million after it came out on top during a bankruptcy auction. But Wojcicki submitted a separate $305 million bid through TTAM and pushed to reopen the auction. TTAM is an acronym for the first letters of 23andMe, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“I am thrilled that TTAM Research Institute will be able to continue the mission of 23andMe to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome,” Wojcicki said in a statement.
23andMe gained popularity because of its at-home DNA testing kits that gave customers insight into their family histories and genetic profiles. The five-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. At its peak, 23andMe was valued at around $6 billion.
The company struggled to generate recurring revenue and stand up viable research and therapeutics businesses after going public, and it has been plagued by privacy concerns since hackers accessed the information of nearly seven million customers in 2023.
TTAM’s acquisition is still subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
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