Tech Disruptor 50 list (continued.)
13th annual Disruptor 50 list of the most innovative private companies representing the new generation of AI era
Top companies & valuations
- Ramp: $13 Billion
Key Technologies: Artificial Intelligence, machine learning
Industry: FinTech
Ramp, a financial operations platform, is part of a growing number of tools designed to automate that process by streamlining payments, cutting costs, and freeing up finance teams to focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets.
Since its launch six years ago, Ramp has become one of the fastest-growing players in the space. It now serves more than 30,000 U.S. companies, ranging from startups like Olipop to large enterprises like CBRE and ZipRecruiter. The company issues credit cards and automates expenses and accounting. It makes money from credit card interchange fees and software subscriptions.
The spend management space has also become more crowded with players like Brex, Navan, Expensify, Mesh Payments, Airbase and Center fighting for market share all while competing against legacy players such as American Express, SAP Concur and Bill.com.
Over the past year, Ramp has doubled down on its focus on enterprise companies and added new features. In January, Ramp Treasury launched, which allows companies to earn 2.5% on idle operating cash. It also acquired Venue, an AI-powered procurement software startup, and used it to roll out new vendor payment tools. In June, it debuted Ramp travel partnering with Priceline to use AI and automation to streamline and simplify the process of booking and managing expenses for corporate travel, moving into a space squarely in the sights of fellow Disruptor Navan. Other product launches include App Center, which deepened integrations with popular enterprise tools like Microsoft Dynamics, Workday, and QuickBooks Desktop.
- Flock Safety: $7.5 Billion
Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, edge computing, machine learning, Internet of Things
Industry: Public safety, defense
Flock Safety, a police tech company from Atlanta, kicked off intense competition in the crime-fighting business this year. Flock Safety sells surveillance technology, including light-post mounted cameras, license plate reading systems, and drones, to police departments, private sector companies and communities concerned about crime.
Flock Safety technology was used in 10% of all successful crime investigations in the country, and in the successful recovery of more than 1,000 missing persons. Its system has been used to help find a missing person with dementia in Indianola, Iowa, after an alert from a license plate camera. In another success story, Flock helped track down an armed man in New Mexico, who was wanted on suspicion of a shooting in Oklahoma.
Flock has a new coffer to help its growth: It recently announced a $275 million round and 2024 revenue of $300 million, a 70% year-over-year increase. With investors including Tiger Global, a16z, and Matrix Partners, Flock Safety’s scale and growth position it for an IPO within the next few years. In October 2024, Flock Safety acquired Aerodome, a pioneer in DFR technology for aerial surveillance; it plans to build a 100,000 square foot drone manufacturing facility in Atlanta.
It is not just police departments using technology. Flock Safety works with seven of the 10 largest shopping malls in the U.S., and 10 out of 40 of the largest U.S. health-care providers.
- AlphaSense: $4 Billion
Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, explainable AI, generative AI, machine learning
Industry: Enterprise technology
With its sharp use of AI-powered tools and an enormous databank of high-quality content to develop more, AlphaSense is disrupting a field where the value of generative AI is clear: corporate enterprise and securities market intelligence.
Like its gen AI peers, the company is growing fast and has seen its valuation rise exponentially since 2023. AlphaSense founded earlier than many gen AI companies, back in 2011, says it counts 88% of the S&P 100 as clients. That client base grew by about 25% in 2024, to more than 5,000, including Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Pfizer and JPMorgan.
Though some enterprises have struggled to find workable applications for AI or secure data that is narrow enough to generate profitable insights, the quality of the data AlphaSense is using is high, because some of it is prepared as part of regulatory filings. The company also scans recent information and compares it against years of data on companies and markets to draw conclusions. It is now being viewed as a competitor to one of the powerhouses of the business information world, Bloomberg.
AlphaSense offers access to conclusions and data based on filings, press releases, and content about public and private companies, and expert insights based on call transcripts. Among AlphaSense’s tools are those that include fast summaries of equity research, and real-time customizable reports. In November 2024, AlphaSense launched Generative Search. Designed to think like an analyst, this tool allows users to ask natural language questions and receive precise insights sourced from AlphaSense’s content.
The company built its edge on the quality of its AI tools — its two platforms have a combined 26 patents — and the growing set of data it uses to feed the AI. And the company keeps adding to its databases. It acquired market intelligence firm Tegus last July for $930 million, picking up its library of expert call transcripts and private company data. AlphaSense says it has a total of 150,000 transcripts and 500 million-plus searchable documents. The Tegus deal also included $650 million in new funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
AlphaSense pricing is based on annual subscription rates of more than $10,000 for packages of external market perspectives to millions of dollars for centralized, siloed research that adds internal research content. Users, who include people working in equities research, corporate development and finance, can search content in 37 languages.
- Octopus Energy: $9 Billion
Key Technology: N/A
Industry: Energy
The politics of the moment may have shaken some faith in the future path for climate investments, but in actual on-the-ground (and sometimes in the water) deployment of solar, wind, and tidal power, Octopus Energy keeps on growing its reach and building a big business.
The U.K.-based provider of energy utility, energy generation, and transmission services is both challenging and partnering with established utilities on both sides of the pond, from British Gas to NRG and Con Edison.
It is now the largest energy supplier in the U.K., serving 7.3 million households across roughly 13 million electric meters.
Octopus has a portfolio of nearly $10 billion, and 11,000 employees across the 32 countries in which it is actively serving nine million customers, most still in the U.K., but with its international customer base nearing 2 million and growing quickly.
One of the keys to its success is its digital transformation of the utility business. Last year, Octopus separated its tech platform as a stand-alone company, Kraken, which now handles not only Octopus accounts, but work for EDF in Europe and National Grid in the U.S. across six million East Coast accounts.
The Kraken platform has already collected 60 million accounts, with goal of 100 million by 2027. Kraken is already crunching five billion data points a day, which can include information from solar panels, heat pumps, and EV chargers.
The Octopus Electroverse is Europe’s largest EV charging platform, supporting around half of electric car drivers in the U.K. and hundreds of thousands more internationally.
The U.K. remains its home base, and home to one of its most ambitious residential programs, Zero bills home, constructed with renewable power that Octopus can sell back to the grid, with a goal of 100,000 by 2030 in the U.K. With solar panels, heat pumps, and batteries that generate a profitable business for Octopus, it can generate $0 bills for homeowners for up to a decade. That innovation is being extended to existing homes in the U.K. which can be retrofit with renewable power, and being taken to Germany and New Zealand.
Across Europe, Octopus continues to add to its project pipeline and development. It recently struck deals for solar and wind energy to power 150,000 homes in France, bringing its total in the country to 500 megawatts across operational and planned wind and solar projects.
It also recently acquired a 2-gigawatt pipeline of 70 renewables projects in Germany, including solar and battery storage. Octopus estimates the solar power alone will cover 500,000 German homes (equal to every household in Frankfurt) and offer battery storage capacity for an additional 150,000 homes.
Investors in Octopus include notable political personalities tied to the climate theme and deep-pocketed pension funds, such as Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, the $700 billion Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Galvanize Climate Solutions.
- Stripe: $92 Billion
Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, machine learning
Industry: Fintech
Since its founding in 2010, Stripe has grown from a few lines of code into the largest privately valued fintech in the world.
Today, Stripe is a global powerhouse serving millions of businesses from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and it offers much more than its original credit card processing tools. It provides backend scaffolding for billing, fraud prevention, business startup help and in-person payment options – all part of a suite of tools meant to grow and increase profitability for businesses from fellow Disruptor Open AI to Amazon, Google, Shopify and Marriott, Apple, Walmart and Target.
Part of Stripe’s focus this past year has been serving the artificial intelligence boom. At its Stripe Sessions conference in 2024, the company unveiled over 50 new features, including AI-powered checkout and fraud prevention.
Stripe took a major step into the world of cryptocurrency, acquiring Bridge Network, a stablecoin platform, for $1.1 billion. The acquisition, its largest to date, and part of a larger plan to integrate stable coins into traditional finance.
Despite years of speculation about an IPO, the Collison brothers, who serve as president and CEO, have emphasized that going public is not a priority. Stripe has taken a hit from its headiest days during the startup boom, but was able to raise funds at a $91.5 billion valuation in early 2025, almost back to its peak valuation of $95 billion in 2021.
Cost management remains a focus. Earlier this year, the fintech company cut 300 jobs in product, engineering and operations, roughly 3.5% of its workforce. But the company said it was still expecting to increase headcount to 10,000 by the end of the year and was “not slowing down hiring.”