These are the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies: See the full list of startups riding the AI wave
It’s fair to say that AI is all over the 12th annual CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
Roughly two-thirds of the 50 companies making the Disruptor 50 list describe artificial intelligence as “critical” to their businesses. And it starts at the very top: for the first time ever, a company repeats as the list ’s No. 1: OpenAI.
Companies in industries ranging from cybersecurity to agriculture are also defining AI as mission critical. And in an important shift from the past Silicon Valley-led disruptive innovation era, the “better, faster, cheaper” mantra funded almost wholly by VCs is on the way out.
AI requires massive capital investment, inevitably leading to close partnership with the incumbent giants rather than just disruptive competition.
In all, the 2024 Disruptors have raised $70 billion at a total implied valuation of $436 billion.
27. Kapital
Founders: Rene Saul (CEO), Fernando Sandoval, Eder Echeverria, Arjun Sethi
Launched: 2020
Headquarters: Mexico City, Mexico
Funding: $295 million
Valuation: N/A
Key technologies: Artificial intelligence, blockchain, deep neural networks/deep learning, generative AI, machine learning
Industry: Fintech
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 0
Small businesses dominate the global economy, and yet few banks focus on lending credit to this underserved demographic. According to the World Bank, small and medium-sized businesses make up 90% of global companies but only get 10.5% of total bank credit available. Even those that do get bank credit often don’t have the kind of robust business management platform that large enterprises have.
“That’s what we’re fixing — we give them visibility of their finances,” Rene Saul, who co-founded Kapital with Fernando Sandoval in 2020, told TechCrunch.
Kapital uses artificial intelligence to serve this group of business customers. Its AI helps to underwrite loans. Its dashboard provides predictive analytics to help companies automate and streamline processes like paying suppliers, invoicing or collections. The platform works under a subscription model.
So far, the Mexico City-based fintech has more than 80,000 clients in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. It acquired Banco Autofin Mexico in September and opened its first physical bank branch in Bogota, Colombia, in 2023. More physical locations are planned.
The company raised $165 million in December through a $40 million equity financing round and $125 million in debt financing. Investors included Tribe Capital, Cervin Ventures and Tru Arrow. This was on top of $23 million in equity financing and $45 million in debt raised last May. The company intends to use the funds to research and develop new AI-driven products and enter new markets.
40. AlphaSense
Founders: Jack Kokko (CEO), Raj Neervannan
Launched: 2011
Headquarters: New York City
Funding: $770 million
Valuation: $2.5 billion
Key technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, deep neural networks/deep learning, explainable AI, generative AI, machine learning
Industry: Enterprise technology
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 0
Recently backed by Alphabet’s CapitalG and Mary Meeker’s Bond, AI-powered search engine AlphaSense is carving out a niche for detailed, real-time financial information analysis for analysts, investment research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy. This past year, it passed the $200 million mark in annualized revenue and added $250 million in venture finance in two separate rounds.
AlphaSense competes indirectly with Dow Jones-owned Factiva for news and industry trends, S&P-owned financial database and company analysis platform Capital IQ, and CB Insights for data-driven insights in emerging technologies, startups and venture capital. This first-time Disruptor 50 company has an edge over these closely aligned rivals in launching advanced AI tools for peering into wide-ranging industries and gleaning insights.
Last year, AlphaSense upped the ante by releasing its first generative AI toolset, Smart Summaries, which works to speed up the research process and gives users more insights from equity research, earnings calls and expert interviews. AlphaSense also debuted Assistant, a gen AI chat tool, and Enterprise Intelligence, which layers in AI search technology summaries onto customers’ proprietary internal research and premium external documents. These products extract insights from large language models developed by AlphaSense.
Strengthening protection of its intellectual property, the search platform was granted its 14th U.S. patent this past year. The new patent is for an innovation that alerts users to relevant financial news, results or data points at publication time.
Founded in 2011, the New York-based company is led by CEO and former Morgan Stanley financial analyst Jack Kokko, whose previous experience includes founding chair of doctor search engine BetterDoctor, acquired by Quest Analytics. Along with his co-founder, fellow Wharton MBA graduate Raj Neervannan, they have spent more than a decade building out the startup’s AI capabilities and data stockpile to optimize its language models and algorithms.
Despite the hype around AI, AlphaSense successfully pulled in a $100 million addition to its Series D financing last April at a valuation of $1.8 billion, and topped that off with $150 million led by Meeker valued at $2.5 billion. Notably, Goldman Sachs has been a leading investor since 2021, and began delivering the firm’s aftermarket research on the AlphaSense platform the next year.
The AI financial research startup recently opened an Asia-Pacific hub in Singapore, and brought on board a chief marketing officer, Heather Zynczak, experienced in pre-IPO technology and high-growth companies.