In May, TIME’s Billy Perrigo traveled to San Francisco to meet with Dario Amodei, the 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 businesses, both were started three years ago. Having Amodei and his company on the cover of this issue speaks loudly about how quickly AI has moved to the top of the agenda of the world’s leading companies, even those that are 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 fast: only seven companies on this year’s TIME100 Companies list appeared in the 2023 edition.
Amodei and his colleagues have become both the creators of some of today’s most powerful AI technology and at the same time perhaps the leading advocates within their field for taking a cautious approach to AI development and exploration. “We’re not trying to say we’re the good guys and the others are the bad guys,” Amodei tells TIME. “We’re trying to pull 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 a relatively new one. In 2020, entertainer Selena Gomez launched Rare Beauty. In the short time since, Gomez has led the cosmetics company to a $2 billion valuation, as it has become a regular subject of acquisition rumors (“I don’t have any plans on that, genuinely,” Gomez tells TIME’s Lucy Feldman) and a powerful example of how individuals with vision and strong followings can continue to disrupt consumer businesses. (If you need another example, please see our cover profile of MrBeast from earlier this year.) Gomez’s message is one that values contentment over beauty, and Rare boasts having raised millions that support mental health initiatives.
To select the list, our editors, led by Emma Barker, request suggestions and applications from across sectors, survey our contributors and correspondents around the world, and seek advice from outside experts. No single data point or financial metric makes a TIME100 Company. Instead, we are looking at a mosaic of qualities, studying impact, innovation, ambition, and success, all in the many different forms that take shape today. And as we say for our other TIME100 projects, we know influence comes in many forms, for better and for worse.
TIME100 Companies is more than an index of business success. It is an argument for what business influence looks like in 2024. At a time when leadership in other sectors is battered, surveys suggest that many look to corporate leaders first for direction. Whether it is José Andrés at World Central Kitchen, Cathy Engelbert at the WNBA, or Jensen Huang at Nvidia, each shows us how companies can provide new models and new inspiration for the future of humanity.
Who are the Aussies and the Israeli?
Blundstone, Ludo Studio (Bluey) and Tomorrow.io
Blundstone
Blundstone boots, a mainstay for blue collar Australians, have been around longer than light bulbs. But now, in its 15th decade, the 100% Tasmanian family-owned company is having a major global moment. A-listers from Jake Gyllenhaal to Kate Middleton have been photographed wearing Blundstone’s Chelsea boots. Blunnies “may be what fashion historians point to as the boot of the early 2020s,” the New York Times declared. The appeal to both fashionistas and fieldhands can be traced back to their durability and versatility. “[F]ashion found us—not the other way around,” joint CEO Adam Blake says. It doesn’t hurt that Blundstone hired its first-ever chief brand officer in 2022 to oversee international growth. In the last five years, the U.S. has gone from 5% of the company’s sales to over 20%. In 2023 it sold 3 million pairs of boots in more than 70 countries, as people slip them on for everything from a snowy hike to a business casual meeting.
Ludo Studio
Australian production company Ludo’s Bluey cartoon series for preschoolers has proven hugely popular—it was not just the most-streamed children’s show in the U.S. in 2023, but the second most streamed show overall, per Nielsen. Airing in 60 countries, the hit helped push global distributor BBC Studios to top £2 billion ($2.5 billion) in revenue in its 2022-2023 fiscal year, a record. Across its more than 150 seven-minute episodes—starring 6-year-old dog Bluey and her tight-knit family—the cartoon rejects a kids-vs.-adults ethos. Instead, parents Chili and Bandit embrace imaginative games with the kids, like “Daddy Robot” helping clean their room. It’s funny, often emotional, and reflects a new era of friendlier parenting. “It’s been parents talking to other parents, saying this is a show that you can watch with your kids,” says Daley Pearson, director and co-founder of the Brisbane-based studio. “Billy Joel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Natalie Portman. We’ve had Prime Ministers speak of their love for the show.” An Adult Bluey Fans group on Facebook has more than half a million members, and a Bluey podcast made by two obsessed moms has 1.6 million downloads. A 28-minute episode in April was a “testing ground” for longer-form shows—or more. “We’d love to do a movie,” Pearson says. Later this year Bluey’s World, an interactive attraction, will open in Brisbane.
Tomorrow.io
Coupling satellite radars and AI, Tomorrow.io is reinventing weather forecasts for the risk-laden climate change era. The eight-year-old startup provides weather “intelligence” to help businesses and governments get a better handle on everything from air quality to wind conditions to major storms. Last year, it became the first private company to operate space-based weather radars. The company says its platform, which allows users to customize more than 40 different weather parameters by location, makes predictions on par or superior to U.S. government and ground systems. JetBlue uses Tomorrow.io at its 10 busiest airports to avoid costly delays and cancellations. Other clients include Uber, Fox Sports, Ford, Denny’s, the Bahamas, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the City of Hoboken, New Jersey. With more satellite launches scheduled this year—Tomorrow.io plans a global network of 30 orbiting radars—the company’s goal is a “constellation bringing next-generation weather forecasting” to billions of people worldwide, says CMO Dan Slagen.
Full list: https://time.com/collection/time100-companies-2024/
israeltrade.org.au 