Sam Jacobs, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
NOT LONG BEFORE WE LAUNCHED THE FIRST TIME100 Companies list in 2021, Jensen Huang told us, “AI is a watershed moment for the world.” That moment has now arrived. Recently, Huang’s company, Nvidia, which makes the hardware powering this revolution, was valued at over $1 trillion. This year’s list, which again includes Nvidia, shows the power of this vision. Accomplishments in AI earned spots for more than a dozen companies, up from five a year ago.
Perhaps most visible among them is OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. Their ChatGPT program has rocketed in popularity, hitting 100 million active users in two months. (It took Instagram 2½ years.) TIME’s former editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal visited Altman and his colleagues in San Francisco in May. We found Altman uncertain about what’s next, describing himself as both “very optimistic and prepared for things to go super wrong at any point.” As Edward and Billy Perrigo write, OpenAI’s impact may be measured not just in users but also in how the company and its rivals shape the future.
To create TIME100 Companies, our editors, led by Emma Barker, seek nominations from our global network of contributors and correspondents as well as from outside experts. Then we evaluate each on key factors, including impact, innovation, ambition, and success. The result is a diverse group of businesses helping chart an essential path forward.
Since we began this effort, we’ve seen how quickly the role business plays in our lives can change. We launched this franchise following the first year of a pandemic that transformed how many people viewed their jobs, their offices, and work entirely. Company leaders were thinking in new ways about what they owed their employees, society, and the planet.
These shifts accelerated our interest in hosting regular conversations with the people shaping the world’s most influential companies. Our weekly newsletter The Leadership Brief—interviews with individuals who lead top global organizations—has built a community of subscribers that includes more than 500,000 people on LinkedIn. To expand on those conversations, we recently launched the TIME CO2 Leadership Report, in which Justin Worland explores the overlapping worlds of business and climate. That intersection is growing more crowded and consequential: compared with last year, twice as many of this year’s TIME100 Companies are leaders in sustainability and clima
