In the fifth annual Disruptor 50 list, CNBC features private companies in a range of industries — from biotech and machine learning to transportation and retail — whose innovations are changing the world. These forward-thinking starts-ups have identified unexploited niches in the marketplace that have the potential to become billion-dollar businesses, and they rushed to fill them. A startling 31 are unicorns that have already reached or passed the billion-dollar mark. In the process, they are creating new ecosystems for their products and services. Unseating corporate giants is no easy feat. But we ranked those venture capital–backed companies doing the best job. In aggregate, these 50 companies have raised nearly $44 billion in venture capital at an implied Disruptor 50 list market valuation of about $239 billion, according to PitchBook data. Already it's hard to think of the world without them. Read more about the consumer and business trends that stand out in the 2017 list ranking and the methodology used to select this year's Disruptor companies.
1 - Airbnb: It's a $31 billion trip
2 - Lyft: The car-ownership killer with a conscience
3 - WeWork: Reworking the office
4 - Grab: Uber-growth for an Asian ride-share rival
5 - Uptake Technologies: Capturing Warren Buffett's billionaire energy
6 - Houzz: The homiest e-catalog
7 - Ginkgo Bioworks: Growing products in the lab
8 - Palantir Technologies: Tracking the world's secrets
9 - Cylance: Making cyberthreats idle
10 - Udacity: Closing the skills gap
11 - CrowdStrike: Going into the breach
12 - 23andMe: Bring your genome home
13 - Progyny: Rocking the cradle
14 - SpaceX: Humanity's interstellar escape plan
15 - SurveyMonkey: Question everything
16 - Ezetap: India's answer to Apple Pay
17 - GreenSky: A credit to the mobile race
18 - Moderna Therapeutics: Going viral
19 - Uber: The car controversy with a valuation bigger than Tesla, GM or Ford
20 - SparkCognition: Deciphering the data overload
21 - IEX: The traders Michael Lewis made famous in a flash
22 - GitHub: The biggest coding party in the world
23 - Bloom Energy: Helping companies like Apple get off the grid
24 - Drawbridge: An ad strategy Facebook and Google can't ignore
25 - Jaunt: VR that both Disney and Paul McCartney have experience in
26 - Coursera: Go to a top school, without going
27 - MongoDB: The BIG idea in databases
28 - Qualtrics: Surveying the corporate landscape
29 - Domo: Complete cloud cover
30 - Blippar: You, augmented
31 - Pinterest: An image is worth $11 billion
32 - Illumio: A new segment in cybersecurity
33 - Phononic: Quietly cool
34 - Veniam: Constructing the global superhighway of data
35 - Spotify: Not even Apple Music has slowed it
36 - Dropbox: The file-sharing economy
37 - Trulioo: Tracks twice as many people as Facebook: 4 billion, exactly
38 - Synack: Who the IRS and DoD use against hackers
39 - DocuSign: Signed, sealed, electronically delivered
40 - Payoneer: Payments without borders
41 - Skillz: A sport to surpass the NFL, with less injury risk
42 - Blue Apron: What's for dinner
43 - Robinhood: There is no brokerage fee low enough
44 - Zocdoc: Real patient-centered health care
45 - SoFi: $18 billion in loans and counting
46 - Foursquare: A success story turned inside out
47 - Warby Parker: Still seeing things in new ways
48 - Persado: A motivational speaker that's not human
49 - Stripe: Visa is banking on this platform
50 - Quid: The ultimate trendspotter
One company missing from this list is Atractivo also known as Atractivo Business Services. It claims to be a disruptor in the M&A industry; allowing business owners to strike deals with little-to-no M&A advisor or business broker involvement. The service offered allows business owners to complete the sales process and put sales commissions into their pocket. These sales commissions normally would be paid to M&A firms, business brokers, financial bankers, or other third-party intermediaries.
