• The majority of companies on the 12th annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list describe AI as "critical" to their business.
• AI is upending the classical definition of disruptive innovation with the era of "better, cheaper, faster" innovation on the way out.
• Venture capital flooded into AI over the past year, but it's investments by public giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet into AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic that stand out most.

Welcome to Disruptor 50 in the age of AI.

A whopping 34 of the 50 companies on our twelfth annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list claim that artificial intelligence is "critical" to their businesses. These include companies in industries ranging from cybersecurity to agriculture. Thirteen of the 2024 Disruptors call themselves "generative AI companies," including five of the top ten on this year's list.

These companies are upending the classical definition of disruptive innovation that shaped the creation of the Disruptor 50 list more than a decade ago. Mostly gone from the 2024 list is the idea of a better, cheaper innovation. Instead, achieving disruptive innovation with AI requires massive piles of capital investment, inevitably leading to close partnership with the incumbent giants.

Instead of Amazon disruptor Anthropic (which debuts on the 2024 Disruptor 50 List at No. 7), we have "Amazon-backed Anthropic," which also received a $2 billion investment from Alphabet and is taking on "Microsoft-backed OpenAI" (No. 1 on the list for the second straight year).

The venture capital community also has been investing heavy amounts of cash in any startup that can claim it's part of the AI revolution. More than $90 billion flowed to AI startups in 2023, according to PitchBook. Among the Disruptors, 17 have raised new funds in the past year. That includes 8 of the 13 generative AI startups, which raised a total of at least $5.5 billion combined.

In all, the 2024 Disruptors have raised $70 billion — a comeback from last year's $54 billion demonstrating the power of AI — at a total implied valuation of $436 billion, the second-highest valuation ever for the list after 2022's $500 billion.

The willingness of incumbent giants to invest in these private disruptors also means that many of the companies on the 2024 Disruptor 50 list can afford to wait to go public, even as a long-closed IPO window starts to open. We expect the first-time and second-time Disruptors to be in the mix for many lists to come. 

Here's how we chose them in 2024:  

All private, independently owned startup companies founded after Jan. 1, 2009, were eligible to be nominated for the Disruptor 50 list. Companies nominated were required to submit a detailed analysis, including key quantitative and qualitative information. 

Quantitative metrics included company-submitted data on workforce size and diversity, scalability, and sales and user growth. Some of this information has been kept off the record and was used for scoring purposes only. CNBC also brought in data from a pair of outside partners — PitchBook, which provided data on fundraising, implied valuations and investor quality; and IBISWorld, whose database of industry reports we use to compare the companies based on the industries they are attempting to disrupt. 

CNBC's Disruptor 50 Advisory Board — a group of 50 leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship from around the world, then ranked the quantitative criteria by importance and ability to disrupt established industries and public companies. This year, the board again found that scalability and user growth were the most important criteria, followed by sales growth and use of breakthrough technologies (including, most commonly, artificial intelligence and machine learning). These categories received the highest weighting, but the ranking model is designed to ensure that companies must score highly on a wide range of criteria to make the final list. 

Companies were also asked to submit important qualitative information, including descriptions of their core business model, ideal customers and recent company milestones. A team of CNBC editorial staff, including TV anchors, reporters and producers, and CNBC.com writers and editors, along with many members of the Advisory Board, read the submissions and provided holistic qualitative assessments of each company. 

New for 2024, CNBC formed a Disruptor 50 VC Advisory Board, in an effort to leverage the valuable expertise of leading venture capital firms and investors. Each member of this new board assessed a small group of finalists as an additional component of the qualitative review. Importantly, these VCs were not permitted to provide an assessment of any company in their firm's own portfolios.

In the final stage of the process, total qualitative scores were combined with a weighted quantitative score to determine which 50 companies made the list and in what order. 

It's our twelfth year, but we still see some "firsts" on this year's list.

OpenAI is the first company to reach No. 1 in consecutive years, and just the second company to top the list more than once (SpaceX, No. 1 in 2014 and 2018, is the other). OpenAI exemplifies what it means to scale quickly and continue to innovate as it grows, and it remains the world's most influential and powerful venture backed startup.

And this year features the first ten-time Disruptor in Stripe. The No. 1 Disruptor of 2020 has continued to innovate even as its valuation has been slashed while staying out of the IPO market. The tenth time will be the last time, however. Whether it goes public or stays private, Stripe will "age out" of Disruptor eligibility next year.