Iin May, TIMEThe company’s Billy Perrigo traveled to San Francisco to meet with Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, one of the most important artificial intelligence startups in the world. Anthropic and TIME100 Companies, our annual list of the world’s most influential companies, were founded three years ago. Having Amodei and his company on the cover of this issue speaks volumes about how quickly AI has moved to the top of the agenda of the world’s leading companies, even those not in the business of developing it themselves. The rise of Anthropic, valued at $15 billion, also reveals how quickly influence can take shape. A lot can change, and quickly: Only seven companies from this year’s TIME100 Companies list appeared in the 2023 edition.
See the list here
Amodei and his colleagues have become the creators of some of today’s most powerful AI technologies and, at the same time, perhaps the leading advocates in their field of a cautious approach to the development and exploration of AI. “We’re not trying to say we’re the good guys and everyone else is the bad guys,” Amodei tells TIME. “We’re trying to move the ecosystem in a direction where everyone can be the good guy.”
The second business featured on the cover of our TIME100 Companies is also relatively new. In 2020, artist Selena Gomez released Rare Beauty. In the short time since then, Gomez has taken the cosmetics company to a $2 billion valuation as it has become a regular target of takeover rumors (“I don’t have any plans on that, genuinely,” Gomez tells TIME’s Lucy Feldman) is a powerful example of how individuals with vision and a strong following can continue to disrupt the consumer business. (If you need another example, see our MrBeast cover profile from earlier this year.) Gomez’s message values contentment over beauty, and Rare is proud to have raised millions to support mental health initiatives.
To select the list, Our editors, led by Emma Barker, solicit suggestions and submissions from across sectors, survey our contributors and correspondents around the world, and seek advice from external experts. No financial data or metrics constitute a TIME100 company. Instead, we are looking at a mosaic of qualities, studying impact, innovation, ambition and success, all in the many different forms taking shape today. And as we say about our other TIME100 projects, we know that influence comes in many forms, for good and for bad.
TIME100 Companies is more than an index of business success. It’s an argument for what business influence will look like in 2024. At a time when leadership in other sectors is shaky, surveys suggest that many look first to business leaders for guidance. Whether it’s José Andrés at World Central Kitchen, Cathy Engelbert at WNBA, or Jensen Huang at Nvidia, each of them shows us how companies can provide new models and new inspiration for the future of humanity.
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