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.
Technology
YouTube donating $15 million in LA wildfire relief, support for creators days before TikTok ban
Charred remains of buildings are pictured following the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, U.S. Jan. 15, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Google and YouTube will donate $15 million to support the Los Angeles community and content creators impacted by wildfires, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced in a blog post Wednesday.
The contributions will flow to local relief organizations including Emergency Network Los Angeles, the American Red Cross, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Institute for Nonprofit News, the blog said. When the company’s LA offices can safely reopen, impacted creators will also be able to use YouTube’s production facilities “to recover and rebuild their businesses” as well as access community events.
“To all of our employees, the YouTube creator community, and everyone in LA, please stay safe and know we’re here to support,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X.
The move comes days before Sunday’s impending TikTok ban that has already seen content creators begin asking fans to follow them on other social platforms. YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform within YouTube, is a competitor to TikTok, along with Meta’s Instagram Reels and the fast-growing Chinese app Rednote, otherwise known as Xiahongshu.
“In moments like these, we see the power of communities coming together to support each other — and the strength and resilience of the YouTube community is like no other,” Mohan wrote.
YouTube’s contributions are in line with a host of other LA companies pledging multi-million dollar donations aimed at assisting employees and residents impacted by the LA fires. Meta announced a $4 million donation split between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company while both Netflix and Comcast pledged $10 million donations to multiple aid groups.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
WATCH: TikTok: What creators would do if the short-form video app goes dark
Technology
TikTok’s U.S. operations could be worth as much as $50 billion if ByteDance decides to sell
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Business moguls such as Elon Musk should be prepared to spend tens of billions of dollars for TikTok’s U.S. operations should parent company ByteDance decide to sell.
TikTok is staring at a potential ban in the U.S. if the Supreme Court decides to uphold a national security law in which service providers such as Apple and Google would be penalized for hosting the app after the Sunday deadline. ByteDance has not indicated that it will sell the app’s U.S. unit, but the Chinese government has considered a plan in which X owner Musk would acquire the operations, as part of several scenarios in consideration, Bloomberg News reported Monday.
If ByteDance decides to sell, potential buyers may have to spend between $40 billion and $50 billion. That’s the valuation that CFRA Research Senior Vice President Angelo Zino has estimated for TikTok’s U.S. operations. Zino based his valuation on estimates of TikTok’s U.S. user base and revenue in comparison to rival apps.
TikTok has about 115 million monthly mobile users in the U.S., which is slightly behind Instagram’s 131 million, according to an estimate by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That puts TikTok ahead of Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit, which have U.S. monthly mobile user bases of 96 million, 74 million and 32 million, according to Sensor Tower.
Zino’s estimate, however, is down from the more than $60 billion that he estimated for the unit in March 2024, when the House passed the initial national security bill that President Joe Biden signed into law the following month.
The lowered estimate is due to TikTok’s current geopolitical predicament and because “industry multiples have come in a bit” since March, Zino told CNBC in an email. Zino’s estimate doesn’t include TikTok’s valuable recommendation algorithms, which a U.S. acquirer would not obtain as part of a deal, with the algorithms and their alleged ties to China being central to the U.S. government’s case that TikTok poses a national security threat.
Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence have their estimate for TikTok’s U.S. operations pegged in the range of $30 billion to $35 billion. That’s the estimate they published in July, saying at the time that the value of the unit would be “discounted due to it being a forced sale.”
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts noted that finding a buyer for TikTok’s U.S. operations that can both afford the transaction and deal with the accompanying regulatory scrutiny on data privacy makes a sale challenging. It could also make it difficult for a buyer to expand TikTok’s ads business, they wrote.
A consortium of businesspeople including billionaire Frank McCourt and O’Leary Ventures Chairman Kevin O’Leary put in a bid to buy TikTok from ByteDance. O’Leary has previously said the group would be willing to pay up to $20 billion to acquire the U.S. assets without the algorithm.
Unlike a Musk bid, O’Leary’s group’s bid would be free from regulatory scrutiny, O’Leary said in a Monday interview with Fox News.
O’Leary said that he’s “a huge Elon Musk fan,” but added “the idea that the regulator, even under Trump’s administration, would allow this is pretty slim.”
TikTok, X and O’Leary Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Mustafa Ciftci | Anadolu via Getty Images
Bitcoin extended its rebound on Wednesday, hovering just below $100,000 after another encouraging inflation report fueled investors’ risk appetite.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by more than 3% at $99,444.43, bringing its 2-day gain to about 7%, according to Coin Metrics.
The CoinDesk 20 index, which measures the broader market of cryptocurrencies, gained 6%.
Bitcoin approaches $100,000 after Wednesday’s CPI data
Shares of Coinbase gained 6%. Bitcoin proxies MicroStrategy and Mara Holdings each gained about 4%.
Wednesday’s move followed the release of the December consumer price index, which showed core inflation unexpectedly slowed in December. A day earlier, the market got another bright inflation reading in the producer price index, which showed wholesale prices rose less in December than expected.
The post-election crypto rally fizzled into the end of 2024 after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sounded an inflation warning on Dec. 18, and bitcoin suffered even steeper losses last week as a spike in bond yields prompted investors to dump growth-oriented risk assets. This Monday, bitcoin briefly dipped below $90,000.
The price of bitcoin has been taking its cue from the equities market in recent weeks, thanks in part to the popularity of bitcoin ETFs, which have led to the institutionalization of the asset. Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 has climbed in the past week, while its correlation with gold has dropped sharply since the end of December.
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