CNBC is now accepting applications for the 2026 Disruptor 50 list — our fourteenth annual look at venture-backed companies innovating across industries, experimenting with AI and, increasingly, making it work at scale.
The deadline for submissions is Monday, Feb. 23 at 11:59 pm EST.
All independent, privately-owned companies founded after Jan. 1, 2011, 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.
2026 could be a turning point for both technology and capital markets: SpaceX — the only company aside from OpenAI to top CNBC’s annual Disruptor 50 list twice — is preparing for a public listing this year that could raise tens of billions of dollars and value the company at over $1 trillion. The listing, which could be the largest IPO on record, underscores a broader shift. Even the most capital-intensive, long-horizon technology companies are increasingly positioning themselves for public market accountability.
That shift reflects a broader recalibration across the technology sector. The era of speculative growth — in which scale and ambition often outpaced clear paths to profitability — is giving way to a more pragmatic, enterprise-focused model of disruption. In 2026, a company’s competitive advantage is less likely to be defined by capital raised and more by its ability to turn that capital into durable, scalable businesses capable of meeting public market expectations.
Private capital, however, remains abundant and willing to fund long-term bets at scale, particularly in the case of generative AI companies. OpenAI and Anthropic raised a combined $176.5 billion in venture funding during the first three quarters of 2025, according to PitchBook data.
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 disruptors.
2026 honorees will be notified in March, and the list will be released in May across CNBC’s TV, digital and social platforms.
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