Disruptive Companies: 2010
50 Smartest Companies
- 3
Coskata
- Years on the List 2010
- 6
GE
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 7
Joule Biotechnologies
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 10
Synthenic Genomics
- Years on the List 2010
- 15
Infinera
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 16
Intel
- Headquarters Santa Clara, California
- Industry Computing & Communications
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010 , 2012 , 2013 , 2016 , 2017
Summary
Intel is benefiting from a series of AI-centric investments and acquisitions it made to offset the decline of its main market, chips for personal computers. In the past year, it bought the deep-learning startup Nervana, the computer-vision chipmaker Movidius, and Mobileye, a supplier of assisted-driving systems. The Movidius purchase enabled Intel to sell chips to drone giant DJI, while the Mobileye acquisition brought it autonomous-driving partnerships with BMW and Delphi Automotive. In March, Intel launched an AI products group to further accelerate its AI efforts.
- 18
Luxtera
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 19
Plastic Logic
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 20
Tilera
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 21
Adobe
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 25
Hulu
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 26
IBM
- Headquarters Armonk, New York
- Industry Computing & Communications
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010 , 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2016 , 2017
Summary
IBM continues to invest in a range of emerging technologies that it thinks will yield sustainable growth, such as the distributed-ledger technology blockchain. With IBM’s help, corporate customers such as Walmart are using blockchain to track products as they move through global supply chains. Though IBM has yet to deliver the financial turnaround it has been promising investors for years, its newer businesses—including blockchain, cloud computing, and AI services—brought in more than 40 percent of the company’s total revenue in 2016. IBM also continues to develop quantum computing technology, which it plans to sell as a cloud service.
- 27
Obopay
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 28
StreamBase
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 31
Yelp
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 37
Fate Therapeutics
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 38
Fluidigm
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 39
GlaxoSmithKline
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 40
Illumina
- Headquarters San Diego, California
- Industry Biomedicine
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010 , 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2016 , 2017
Summary
The leader in commercializing the rapid sequencing of human DNA, the company reported a steep drop in sales last fall, suggesting that the market for its sequencing machines might be saturated. Three months later it unveiled a new machine, NovaSeq, that it says is capable of sequencing as many as 48 entire human genomes in two and a half days—and someday pushing the cost of sequencing down to $100, potentially low enough to significantly expand what researchers can learn about diseases.
- 42
Nanosphere
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 46
DuPont
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 48
Prime View International
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry
- 50
Solyndra
- Industry Advanced manufacturing
- Status public
- Years on the List 2010
- Industry