CNBC is now accepting applications for the 2025 Disruptor 50 list — our thirteenth 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. 10 at 11:59 pm EST.

All independent, privately-owned companies founded after Jan. 1, 2010, are eligible, and any company founder or executive, investor in the company, or any of their communications representatives can access and submit an application.

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, and the use of breakthrough technology.

Naturally, this means AI. Last year, roughly two-thirds of the 50 companies making the Disruptor 50 list describe artificial intelligence as “critical” to their businesses, including OpenAI, which has topped the list for the past 2 years.

But this also means that one third of last year’s Disruptors were NOT AI companies, and the 2025 list will also honor market-changing innovations in food, energy, financial services and other industries where some disruptions have been less dependent on the generative AI boom.

CNBC’s two advisory boards – one made up of leading academic thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship, the other a group of top-tier venture capitalists – will provide weighting for the quantitative criteria underpinning the list’s proprietary methodology that has made the Disruptor 50 recognition a gold standard in the startup community. The quantitative score is combined with a qualitative assessment and editorial review, performed by CNBC staff, who read every submission on the way to finalizing  the selection of this year’s fifty.

2025 honorees will be notified in April, and the list will be released in June across CNBC’s TV, digital and social platforms

Cryptocurrencies rose to start the year, rebounding from recent losses as investor optimism returned to the market.

The price of bitcoin rose 2% to $96,711.71 Thursday, bringing its new year gain to about 3% when counting trading from the Jan. 1 session.

The CoinDesk 20 index, a measure of the broader cryptocurrency market, advanced 4%. The token tied to Solana, the popular Ethereum competitor, led the gains with a 7% increase. Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy each climbed 4% as well.

This year is expected to be a banner year for the crypto industry thanks to a more favorable regulatory environment promised by President-elect Donald Trump. Investors are hoping Congress will pass its first ever crypto focused legislation – which could be centered around stablecoins or market structure.

Traders are also keen to see the crypto public equity markets open up with more initial public offerings and progress on a potential national strategic bitcoin reserve.

Crypto assets slid into the end of 2024. Although the post-election rally that sent bitcoin to new records above $100,000 had fizzled, the flagship cryptocurrency still ended the year up more than 120%. Long-term holders took some profits while others sold amid renewed uncertainty about the direction of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in 2025.

Tesla posted its fourth-quarter vehicle production and deliveries report on Thursday. Here are the key numbers:

Total deliveries Q4 2024: 495,570

Total production Q4 2024: 459,445

Total annual deliveries 2024: 1,789,226

Total annual production 2024: 1,773,443

Results for the quarter represented the first annual drop in delivery numbers for Tesla, which reported 1.81 million deliveries in 2023. It reported 484,507 deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Tesla shares fell by as much as 7% in trading on Thursday.

Analysts had expected Tesla to report deliveries in the quarter of 504,770, including 474,000 Model 3 and Model Y EVs, according to a consensus of estimates compiled by StreetAccount. Tesla sent some investors a company-compiled delivery consensus of 506,763 vehicles, based on a survey of 26 analysts. A widely followed independent Tesla researcher, who publishes as Troy Teslike, predicted deliveries of 501,000.

Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales reported by Tesla but are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications.

The fourth-quarter report comes after a huge late-year rally in Tesla’s stock, which finished 2024 up 63%. In mid-December, the shares reached a record, eclipsing their prior all-time high from 2021.

It was a big turnaround from the first quarter, when the stock plummeted 29%, its worst period since 2022, as the company contended with declining sales despite price cuts and incentives for buyers. On the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April, CEO Elon Musk told investors that while he expected “higher sales this year than last year,” the growth rate would slow from 38% in 2023.

The biggest story at Tesla in the back half of the year was Musk’s role in President-elect Donald Trump’s election campaign. Musk, the world’s richest person, poured in around $277 million to promote Trump and other Republican candidates, and spent weeks on the road campaigning in swing states.

Musk, who also runs SpaceX and xAI and owns social network X, has been tapped to co-lead an advisory group to the Trump administration that will aim to slash federal spending, personnel and regulations.

Sam Fiorani, a vice president at industry research group Auto Forecast Solutions, told CNBC in an email that Musk’s foray into politics may have “pulled his focus away from his core businesses.” However, the degree to which investors or EV buyers care won’t be reflected in Tesla’s numbers until the first quarter, he said.

Until recently, Tesla had been one of the only automakers mass producing battery-electric vehicles. The company now faces an onslaught of competition from domestic automakers, including General Motors, Ford and Rivian as well as BYD in China, Hyundai in Korea, and European auto giants BMW and Volkswagen.

Patrick George, editor in chief of InsideEVs, told CNBC that he thinks Tesla still does many things better than any other EV maker, especially when it comes to its charging network. But Tesla’s biggest operational challenge in the latest quarter was “the nuts-and-bolts job of being a car company.”

In North America, Tesla has remained dominant. The company offered a range of incentives and price cuts, even on its most popular Model Y SUV, during the fourth quarter to drive sales. Still, Tesla experienced a buildup of inventory.

During the fourth quarter, the company sent Cybertruck assembly line workers home for a few days, indicating that it may be looking to avoid flooding the market with too many of the vehicles.

Looking ahead to 2025, Musk said on an earnings call in October that Tesla expects to be offering lower-cost and autonomous vehicles in 2025, which should lead to “20% to 30% growth” over 2024.

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