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
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