Skip to Content

50 Disruptive Companies 2013

Our fourth annual list of companies around the world whose innovations will reshape markets.
February 20, 2013

Instead, this package is meant to capture the rich variety of ways that innovations get commercialized. Each company on this list has done something over the past year that will strengthen its hold on a market, challenge the leaders of a market, or create a new market. As we detail in four feature stories and three CEO Q&As in this package, some of these companies, like the thermostat maker Nest, have burst forth with a breakthrough product, and the question now is what the next one will be. Others, like the battery startup Ambri, are still on the verge of their breakthrough. Then there are startups like Pinterest that still have to figure out their business model, and long-established companies like Xerox and Microsoft that have managed to change how their customers think of them. And some members of this group are opening up opportunities by greatly expanding the use of existing technology—such as the Chinese genomics research company BGI.

The pace of technological change is brutal. Even Apple, which we have selected for this package four years in a row, has to scramble. We think TV will be the product that returns it to the list next year, but there are hardly any guarantees. Only 15 of these 50 companies were also here last yearor 14 if you don't count Nicira, a cloud-computing company that returns as part of its acquirer, VMware.

-->

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.