The 100 most innovative companies of 2026

Alphabet, Google’s parent, helped kickstart the current AI wave. Its researchers published the 2017 “Attention Is All You Need” paper that made the transformer AI architecture standard, and DeepMind’s AlphaFold work won a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. While it now sells Gemini AI models and custom AI tensor processing unit (TPU) chips, its execution has been inconsistent. One bright spot is its growing Waymo robotaxi service. Another is how it is commercializing drug discovery and life science research via its Isomorphic Labs spin-off.

The retail giant Amazon built the public cloud that much of the internet runs on and, after buying the warehouse automation pioneer Kiva in 2012, became the world’s largest operator of warehouse robots. It now designs its AI chips for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and uses robots plus AI routing to move goods through its retail network.

Since its founding in 2021, Anthropic has pushed its Claude AI model family beyond conversation increasingly into coding and scientific work. Following its 2025 launch, its Claude Code programming agent has swiftly won enterprise business traction, while Claude Science, launched in beta in June 2026, connects AI to research software, protein databases and laboratory workflows.

The private Beijing owner of TikTok (U.S. operations are owned by TikTok USDS), Douyin, CapCut and the Doubao chatbot is the largest social-media company by revenue. ByteDance has also ramped up its AI focus with its Seed research group behind its popular Seedance video models.

After researchers from the University of California, Berkeley founded the company in 2013, Databricks has continued to steadily evolve its enterprise-data platform. Most recently, it has enabled AI agents to answer business questions and act on the results on the platform, controlling the data they access and the computing costs they incur. Its Genie One AI coworker reached general availability in 2026. Genie One AI answers natural-language questions using governed enterprise data, and can initiate tasks in tools such as Slack and Jira. Also new is the Unity Gateway control layer, which governs access to AI models, agents and tools while routing requests and setting usage and spending limits. The company reported that it passed a $100 million revenue run rate within months of its February release.

After selling its struggling Watson Health division in 2022, the computing giant continues to pursue its reinvention in quantum computing. In the interim, its mainframes, software and consulting still serve large banks and governments. In 2026, it committed more than $10 billion to quantum computing and closed its roughly $11 billion purchase of Confluent, a data-streaming company, on March 17.

With Facebook an increasingly aging platform and its Metaverse scaled back, Meta went all in on AI in 2026. The company, which also owns the Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, formed Meta Superintelligence Labs in mid-2025 around a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI. It installed founder Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer. The unit’s first model, Muse Spark, arrived in April 2026. Its September update, Muse Spark 1.3, ranks near the front of Artificial Analysis’s Intelligence Index; a higher-scoring variant remains in limited partner preview.

The Redmond, Washington tech pioneer has joined rivals Alphabet and AWS in its aggressive spending on AI and data infrastructure. Microsoft was early to embrace AI, although it has had mixed execution in converting investments into profit centers. In the plus column, its Azure cloud, Microsoft 365 suite and GitHub carry more paid enterprise AI seats than any rival has disclosed.

OpenAI, the San Francisco lab behind ChatGPT, now serves more than 1 billion weekly free users. Its ChatGPT and Codex tools routinely rank at or near the top of a variety of benchmarks, including the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index. Bloomberg reported on August 13, 2026 that its annualized revenue run rate had passed $40 billion. The organization, which was founded as a nonprofit in 2015, is pursuing an initial public offering (IPO).

The Denver software company that helped make “forward-deployed engineer” a buzz phrase has made its military intelligence surveillance experience a template for enterprise companies. While its Gotham platform continues to serve defense and intelligence agencies, its Foundry platform does the same job for companies. It connects a customer's data, software permissions and operating procedures so employees and AI systems can coordinate decisions such as hospital patient placement. Its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) lets AI models act on that data, and a top-five drugmaker qualified Foundry for regulated pharmaceutical work in January 2023.

Palo Alto Networks has turned security for AI applications and agents into a paying business. Its Prisma AIRS platform inventories agents and models, tests them with simulated attacks and applies policies while they operate, extending protection to the identities and credentials agents use. Management reported more than 800 customers and over $100 million in annual recurring revenue within four quarters of general availability. Its wider security-operations software also automates the sorting and investigation of alerts.

Founded in 1999, Salesforce's early slogan was "No Software," a jab at on-premise vendors that helped it build the largest installed base in customer-relationship management. Now in a world that AI is turning upside down, it is the incumbent facing a new type of jab. The company’s traditional model was based on software “seats,” a concept AI is chipping away at. Jefferies gave the resulting selloff a name, the "SaaSapocalypse," as Salesforce shares fell 20% in 2025 and another 22% into August 2026. Salesforce has done more than many software incumbents to convert its base into paid agent revenue. Agentforce, its agent platform, passed $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue in the July quarter, and the company completed its acquisition of Informatica, a data-management company, on November 18, 2025 to feed those agents cleaner data.

Bill McDermott, who formerly led SAP, has reshaped ServiceNow into what it calls "the AI control tower for business reinvention." Its agents can carry out processes such as password resets and employee onboarding through existing permissions and systems. Between December 2025 and April 2026, it spent about $11.65 billion buying Moveworks, Veza and Armis.

The cloud data company, whose customers store and analyze corporate data on its platform and pay for the workloads they run, has turned that data into a base for AI agents. Its CoCo coding agent writes and runs code against a customer's governed data, its CoWork agent does the same for business users, and a $200 million multiyear deal signed in February 2026 brought OpenAI's models inside the platform. R&D spending reached $1.969 billion in fiscal 2026 against revenue of $4.684 billion.

Tencent is bringing its AI research into both a large advertising business and tools used by developers and companies. It attributes part of its advertising growth to AI systems that select ads and automate campaigns. Its Hunyuan work extends to 3D creation: by the engine’s November 2025 global launch, the company reported more than 150 mainland Chinese enterprises using the model through Tencent Cloud. Office and coding assistants give that research additional routes into paid use.

AMD, the chip designer that is NVIDIA's main rival in data-center GPUs, has turned its EPYC processors, Instinct accelerators, networking and ROCm software into complete AI systems. Helios, its first full rack, combines MI450-series accelerators with EPYC processors and networking to compete with NVIDIA's Vera Rubin rack, and in July 2026 Anthropic signed for up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 GPUs in Helios systems. The March 2025 purchase of ZT Systems, an AI server-rack designer, gave AMD the system-design capability behind that shift.

The global semiconductor firm Analog Devices, in the automotive sector, is expanding in-vehicle data capacities. Its A2B 2.0 automotive network entered production in April 2026, adding four times the bandwidth and the ability to carry Ethernet data over audio wiring. ADI says the design can lower system cost by up to 30%.

Founded in 1967, Applied Materials makes the deposition, etch and inspection equipment chipmakers use at almost every step of fabrication, and it has now brought electron-beam measurement and defect review to advanced packaging, where multiple chips are joined inside one package.

Arista is developing faster Ethernet networks for AI clusters while addressing the power consumed by their connections. Its 7060XE7 design, announced in June 2026, combines 1.6-terabit ports with traffic-management software and optics the company says can cut interconnect power consumption by approximately 60%.

Arm, the SoftBank-controlled yet public company whose processor designs sit in almost every smartphone, spent decades licensing designs. In March 2026 it broke that model with the AGI CPU, a data-center processor built with Meta as lead development partner to coordinate AI workloads and move data among accelerators, and by July it was shipping to Cerebras, OpenAI, Meta, Cloudflare and Oracle.

ASML continues to dominate the extreme-ultraviolet lithography machine market that prints circuitry on advanced chips. Its customers include TSMC, Samsung and Intel, and it shipped 48 EUV systems in 2025. The next generation, High-NA EUV, uses 0.55 numerical-aperture optics to print finer patterns in a single exposure.

Broadcom co-designs the custom AI accelerators that Google, Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI are building as alternatives to NVIDIA GPUs, and makes the Ethernet switching chips that connect those processors into large training and inference systems.

Cadence Design Systems makes the software, emulation hardware and reusable circuit blocks engineers use to design and verify chips before manufacturing. In 2026 it made two moves beyond that core, adding AI agents such as AuraStack, which automates circuit-board and advanced-packaging design, and extending from electronics into mechanical and structural simulation through its February purchase of Hexagon's Design and Engineering business, which brought MSC Nastran and Adams.

Cisco, the networking incumbent whose switches and routers propelled the rise of the internet in the late 1990s and 2000s, is pushing its Silicon One chips into AI infrastructure. Its P200 routing chip powers the 8223, a 51.2 Tbps router built to link AI clusters in separate buildings, hyperscaler AI orders reached $9.3 billion in fiscal 2026, and its 2024 $28 billion purchase of Splunk added data-analysis software.

Intel, the Santa Clara company that designs the x86 processors in most PCs and servers and the only U.S. company still running leading-edge logic fabs, appointed Lip-Bu Tan as CEO in March 2025. It manufactures chips on its Intel 18A process, a node that pairs RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors with PowerVia, its backside power delivery, for laptop CPUs and its foundry business.

KLA is adapting chip inspection to the bonded, thinned and warped wafers used in advanced packaging. Its inspection systems use AI to distinguish defects from false alarms while maintaining sensitivity on these difficult surfaces. Semiconductor process-control revenue grew 12% in fiscal 2026, which the company linked partly to advanced-packaging adoption and expanding installations.

Lam Research is tackling two manufacturing problems that limit denser chips, depositing thick insulating layers without cracking, and carving increasingly narrow structures. Its VECTOR TEOS 3D deposition system lays down crack-free films thicker than 30 microns in one pass on warped wafers that previously cracked or coated unevenly, and its Akara etching system, first adopted for 2-nanometer-and-below logic, has spread into DRAM with an installed base doubling annually since launch.

Marvell Technology designs the optical and electrical links between processors, memory and storage, and now builds custom AI processors for cloud customers alongside them. The Teralynx T100, a switch chip introduced in June 2026, moves 102.4 terabits per second and lets data centers connect AI servers with fewer switching layers, and its custom-chip packaging platform, qualified with a major hyperscaler, joins 1,390 square millimeters of silicon with four stacks of high-bandwidth memory.

MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip designer whose Dimensity processors established its place in smartphones, is extending that design work into custom AI accelerators for cloud providers. Its first accelerator ASIC, for an unnamed U.S. cloud customer, is scheduled for production in the fourth quarter of 2026 with data-center revenue expected to exceed US$2 billion this year, and on August 31 NVIDIA bought US$3.5 billion of its convertible bonds as MediaTek adopted NVLink Fusion, NVIDIA's method for wiring custom chips into its racks.

Micron, the Boise, Idaho memory maker and the only U.S.-headquartered producer of DRAM and high-bandwidth memory, the stacked chips that feed data to AI processors, grew fiscal 2025 revenue 49% to $37.378 billion as cloud memory sales rose 257%. It now supplies that memory, server-memory modules and storage drives for NVIDIA's current AI platform.

Nokia, the Finnish company that helped pioneer mobile phones in the 1990s and 2000s and remade itself as a telecommunications-infrastructure supplier in the mid-2010s, continues to redefine itself. Most recently, it is making its optical-networking business a supplier of AI data-center links. This move gained momentum with its February 2025 purchase of Infinera, the maker of optical networking equipment and photonic semiconductors. Nokia’s 1830 GX platform, the compact modular transport platform for edge-to-core optical data center interconnects, and 1.2-terabit ICE7 coherent optics now carry data-center traffic at up to 100 terabits per second per link, sales to AI and cloud customers rose 105% in the second quarter of 2026, and its AI-RAN platform, announced in July, runs Nokia's radio software on NVIDIA GPUs to extract more capacity from operators' existing spectrum.

Few companies have undergone a transformation as thorough as NVIDIA. Founded at a Denny’s in 1993, NVIDIA initially built graphics processing units, or GPUs, for video-game aficionados. Now, the company’s GPUs remain the most popular option in the AI race. Today, CEO Jensen Huang calls the data centers that buy its systems “AI factories.” NVIDIA’s GPUs and CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) software support much of the training behind frontier AI models.

Founded in the 1980s, Qualcomm built its smartphone business on Snapdragon processors and cellular modems. The San Diegan company is now seeing its revenue potentially rising, thanks to AI and automotive lines of business. The shift arrives as its client Apple reduces its use of Qualcomm modems in iPhones, a revenue stream that Qualcomm noted could decline faster than it initially anticipated.

Renesas, the Japanese supplier of microcontrollers and processors for cars and factory equipment, is pairing its chips with the software that engineers use to design the chips into products. The cloud-based, integrated electronics development platform Renesas 365, built on the Altium electronics-design software it bought in August 2024 and generally available since March 2026, connects part selection, software and model-based evaluation across more than 550 of its RA microcontrollers.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory maker by revenue, with businesses spanning foundry logic, displays, phones and appliances, fell behind SK hynix in high-bandwidth memory in 2024 and 2025 and has spent 2026 closing that gap. It began commercial HBM4 (High Bandwidth Memory 4) shipments in February, had the memory in mass production for NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform by March, sampled 12-layer HBM4E in May, and posted record Q2 revenue of ₩171.5 trillion on memory demand.

SK hynix, the South Korean memory maker, supplies the high-bandwidth memory that feeds data to AI processors, a business it has led since starting mass production for NVIDIA's H100 in June 2022, and it held that lead through the HBM4 transition. It supplied 50% of global HBM revenue in Q2 2026, began mass shipments of HBM4 that quarter, sampled HBM4E in June, and listed on Nasdaq in July, raising about $26.5 billion.

STMicroelectronics, the maker of analog, power, sensor and microcontroller chips, is moving into optical links for AI servers as its auto and industrial markets emerge from a two-year downturn. Its PIC100 silicon-photonics chip integrates the optical functions of a data-center transceiver so data moves as light; it entered high-volume production on 300-millimeter wafers in March 2026, and customers' long-term capacity reservations support plans to more than quadruple output by 2027.

The Sunnyvale, California–based chip-design software company has combined its electronic-design tools with the physics simulation it acquired in the July 2025 purchase of Ansys. The first Multiphysics Fusion workflows, which let engineers address heat and power while adjusting a circuit's timing, reached customers in June 2026, and NVIDIA, Cisco, MediaTek and Samsung Foundry validated the speed gains.

TDK, the Japanese maker of magnetic materials, recording heads, batteries and sensors, is redirecting its component business toward AI data centers and wearables. Its FS1525 power module packs the controller, switching transistors and inductor that feed current to a processor into one part, with AMD and Altera platform designs listed, its temperature sensors are shipping for AI power supplies and liquid cooling, and its PositionSense motion-sensing package is finding new uses in augmented-reality eyewear.

Texas Instruments traces its origins to Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI), which was founded in 1930. It adopted the moniker Texas Instruments in 1951 and became a prominent analog and embedded-chip maker after that. More recently, it has put AI inference on a chip that costs less than a dollar. Its MSPM0G5187 microcontroller, introduced in March 2026, carries a dedicated neural-processing unit so appliances, sensors and industrial equipment can analyze data locally without a cloud link, and TI is spending more than $60 billion on seven connected 300-millimeter fabs in Texas and Utah, the first of which began production in December 2025.

Tokyo Electron, the Japanese equipment maker also known as TEL, builds the coater/developers that apply and develop light-sensitive resist around every lithography exposure, along with etch and test tools.

Founded in 1987 by Morris Chang, TSMC pioneered the pure-play foundry model, manufacturing chips designed by its customers. That model has turned it into the manufacturing backbone of leading-edge computing: TSMC produces chips for Apple, NVIDIA, AMD and Qualcomm. Analyst firm Counterpoint estimates it held 73% of pure-play foundry revenue in Q2 2026.

Founded in the city of Jena in 1846, ZEISS, the precision-optics group, has a diversified set of business segments, spanning semiconductor manufacturing technology, medical technology, industrial quality and research, and consumer markets. As a long-term metrology leader, it supplies the optics inside ASML's lithography machines and also builds inspection equipment and research microscopes. Its AIMS EUV 3.0 photomask-inspection system images the stencils carrying a chip's pattern the way an EUV scanner would, supports High-NA EUV and runs at three times its predecessor's throughput; two systems were in production at two chipmakers by September 2025.

AbbVie is replacing Humira, its former blockbuster for inflammatory diseases, with Skyrizi and Rinvoq, newer medicines for immune disorders. It also won approval for Decnupaz, a targeted treatment for BPDCN, a rare and aggressive blood cancer. Decnupaz is an antibody-drug conjugate that binds the CD123 marker on malignant cells and delivers a cell-killing alkylating agent.

Amgen, the Thousand Oaks biotech that helped found the industry on engineered proteins, continues to drive healthy growth. The company said in August 2026 that seventeen of its products annualize above $1 billion.

AstraZeneca, the Cambridge, England drugmaker behind the lung-cancer pill Tagrisso, pulled in $54.07 billion in revenue in 2025. Baxfendy, one of its newest launches, lowers blood pressure by inhibiting production of the hormone aldosterone, offering a novel mechanism for hypertension. AstraZeneca acquired the drug through its purchase of Cincor in 2023.

BeOne Medicines, the oncology company founded in Beijing in 2010, developed Brukinsa in-house into the U.S. class leader among pills that block the BTK enzyme B-cell cancers rely on, and it has now added a second mechanism. Beqalzi, a BCL-2 inhibitor that blocks a protein keeping cancer cells alive, won FDA accelerated approval in May 2026 for mantle cell lymphoma after China approved it in January.

Boehringer Ingelheim, the family-owned German drugmaker whose biggest product remains Jardiance, brought two lung medicines to more patients in 2026: Hernexeos, an oral treatment for lung tumors driven by HER2 mutations, expanded into first-line use in February, and Jascayd, a pill that slows lung scarring in pulmonary fibrosis, gained EU authorization in July. Its obesity candidate survodutide cut body weight 12% to 13% at 76 weeks in a Phase 3 trial.

Bristol Myers Squibb, the drugmaker that must replace revenue from Eliquis and Opdivo as their exclusivity ends, won approval in August 2026 for Zenbexus, the first of the oral CELMoD agents, molecules that make myeloma cells degrade the proteins Ikaros and Aiolos they depend on. A second CELMoD, mezigdomide, posted a positive Phase 3 result in March, and its engineered immune-cell treatment Breyanzi grew 41% in the second quarter.

Daiichi Sankyo developed DXd, a technology that attaches a topoisomerase-1 chemotherapy payload to an antibody that seeks out tumor cells, and the platform keeps expanding. Enhertu, which targets HER2, and Datroway, which targets TROP2, both sold with AstraZeneca, gained three new U.S. breast-cancer indications in a single week in May 2026, and a third DXd conjugate is under FDA priority review for small cell lung cancer.

Eisai, the drugmaker that discovered lecanemab, sold as Leqembi with Biogen as co-commercialization partner, has moved the Alzheimer's antibody out of the infusion center. Leqembi Iqlik, an autoinjector pen that delivers the drug under the skin, gained FDA approval for initiation dosing in July 2026, letting eligible patients begin treatment with weekly injections instead of intravenous infusions. Leqembi clears amyloid-beta clumps from the brain and slowed decline by 27% against placebo in the 18-month Clarity AD trial.

Eli Lilly makes Mounjaro and Zepbound, once-weekly injections of tirzepatide that mimic two gut hormones (GLP-1 and GIP) to lower blood sugar and appetite. Foundayo adds a daily weight-loss pill to its injectable treatments.

Genmab’s engineering of antibodies with two different arms is producing approved cancer treatments and expanding their uses. Its DuoBody technology underpins Epkinly, which brings immune T cells into contact with malignant B cells. Developed with AbbVie, the medicine gained an additional U.S. follicular-lymphoma approval in November 2025. A further late-stage trial result in June 2026 supported expansion into another lymphoma setting, giving the antibody platform a path beyond its initial uses.

Gilead Sciences, whose HIV portfolio sold $20.8 billion in 2025, turned lenacapavir, a drug that jams the capsid, the protein shell HIV uses to carry its genes into a cell, into a twice-yearly preventive injection. Sold as Yeztugo since June 2025, it replaced daily prevention pills, and more than 70% of users have returned for their six-month dose; Bixlenvo, approved in August 2026, pairs it with bictegravir in a once-daily treatment tablet.

Incyte, the biotech built on Jakafi, the ruxolitinib pill approved in 2011 for the bone-marrow cancer myelofibrosis, is finally growing beyond it. Sales of its newer hematology and oncology products rose 69% in Q2 2026 on Niktimvo, Monjuvi and Zynyz, and in May it expanded its collaboration with Genesis Therapeutics, whose molecular-AI platform designs small drug molecules, for $120 million upfront.

Johnson & Johnson, the medicines-and-devices group, launched on both sides of the business in 2026 as Stelara faced biosimilar competition: Icotyde, a once-daily oral peptide that blocks the IL-23 receptor driving psoriasis inflammation, approved in March, and Inlexzo, a system that holds chemotherapy inside the bladder and releases it over three weeks.

Merck & Co., the Rahway, New Jersey drugmaker whose cancer immunotherapy Keytruda is the world's best-selling medicine, spent $15.79 billion on R&D in 2025 as it works to replace Keytruda before its patents expire later this decade. Its newest products are an oral cholesterol-lowering drug and a personalized cancer therapy designed around each patient's tumor mutations.

Moderna, the messenger-RNA company whose revenue fell 40% in 2025 as COVID-19 vaccine demand faded, proved in 2026 that the platform works beyond COVID. The FDA approved Mflusiva, the first mRNA influenza vaccine, in August, the EU authorized its combined flu and COVID shot in April, and its personalized cancer therapy with Merck, manufactured from each patient's tumor mutations, met its Phase 3 endpoints in melanoma.

Novartis, which narrowed its focus to prescription medicines by spinning off Sandoz, sells Pluvicto, a radioligand that binds a marker on prostate-cancer cells and irradiates them, and Rhapsido, a pill that blocks the BTK enzyme behind persistent hives. Pluvicto sales rose 43% in Q2 2026 as Novartis broke ground on a fifth U.S. radioligand plant, and Rhapsido gained EU and Japanese approvals.

Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, may have lost the obesity lead to Lilly's tirzepatide, but its pill form of Wegovy, approved in December 2025, has passed five million cumulative prescriptions.

Founded in 1988, Regeneron is now a prominent biotech that sells Dupixent with Sanofi and the eye medicine Eylea. It discovers fully human antibodies with VelocImmune, its platform of genetically humanized mice. In 2026 it won two first-of-kind approvals: Otarmeni, a gene therapy for inherited deafness, and Pasatru, an antibody for fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a disease that turns connective tissue into bone.

Roche, the Basel pharmaceuticals and diagnostics group and the largest company in either business by revenue, sells Ocrevus, Hemlibra and Vabysmo. It agreed in May 2026 to buy PathAI, a digital pathology company, for $750 million upfront, and in June launched a DNA sequencer that expands genetic information into longer molecules for electronic reading.

UCB, the Belgian drugmaker, discovered bimekizumab, the first antibody to block both IL-17A and IL-17F inflammatory signals, and sells it as Bimzelx. The drug keeps beating rivals head to head: in May 2026 it outperformed Skyrizi on joint symptoms in psoriatic arthritis, its fourth consecutive head-to-head win in psoriatic disease, and first-half sales rose 91% to €1.53 billion.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the biotech with a near-monopoly in cystic fibrosis medicines, is extending into new fields. Journavx, a non-opioid pain pill that blocks the NaV1.8 sodium channel in peripheral nerves, reached approximately 535,000 filled prescriptions in Q2 2026, and Casgevy, the gene-editing therapy for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia developed with CRISPR Therapeutics, expanded to children aged two and older in July.

Boston Scientific, the device maker behind Watchman, a leading implant for closing the heart's left atrial appendage, helped establish pulsed-field ablation as a standard treatment for atrial fibrillation with Farapulse, which uses electrical pulses instead of heat to destroy the tissue sustaining the irregular rhythm. Now it is pushing that treatment earlier: the AVANT-GUARD trial tested ablation before antiarrhythmic drugs and reported 56% treatment success at 12 months against 30% with drugs.

Edwards Lifesciences makes replacement heart valves delivered through catheters, including the SAPIEN aortic-valve family, and sold its Critical Care monitoring unit to BD for $4.2 billion in 2024 to concentrate on them. SAPIEN M3, approved in December 2025, is a replacement mitral valve delivered through a vein and across the wall between the heart's upper chambers, for patients unsuitable for surgery or catheter-based repair.

GE HealthCare, spun out of General Electric in 2023, makes CT, MRI and ultrasound scanners, patient monitors and imaging agents, and in 2026 it entered photon-counting CT. Photonova Spectra's silicon detector counts individual X-ray photons and sorts their energies into eight bands so clinicians can separate materials such as iodine, calcium and fat in one examination; it gained FDA clearance in March and CE marking in August.

Intuitive Surgical, whose 11,710 installed da Vinci robots make it the established platform for robotic surgery, is moving hospitals onto da Vinci 5, its fifth generation, cleared in March 2024, which adds force feedback so surgeons can feel the forces applied through the instruments. Hospitals took 246 of the systems in Q2 2026, more than half of all da Vinci placements. The company also makes the Ion bronchoscopy system.

Medtronic is combining heart mapping and two forms of treatment in a single catheter, while bringing another surgical robot into clinical use. Its Affera Sphere-9 catheter maps electrical activity and delivers either pulsed-field or radiofrequency ablation to treat abnormal rhythms. The broader cardiac-ablation business has grown rapidly across successive quarters, and management reports gains in U.S. share for Sphere-9. Its Hugo robot also reached its first U.S. commercial procedure in February 2026, extending its minimally invasive treatment work beyond catheters.

Siemens Healthineers, the Siemens-controlled medical-technology company that also sells laboratory diagnostics and Varian radiotherapy systems, pioneered photon-counting CT with the 2021 launch of Naeotom Alpha, whose detector counts individual X-ray photons to produce sharper images at lower dose. That lead is deep, more than a million patients scanned within three years, and in March 2026 it added Alzheimer's-related blood tests to its installed Atellica analyzers.

10x Genomics makes the Chromium single-cell and Xenium and Visium spatial-biology systems academic and pharmaceutical researchers use to profile individual cells and locate their activity in tissue; it has sold 8,046 instruments since its first launch in 2015. Atera, announced in April 2026, is its whole-transcriptome in situ platform: it aims to measure activity across all genes while keeping each signal's location in the tissue.

Bruker makes the magnetic-resonance, mass-spectrometry, X-ray and microscopy instruments researchers use to identify molecules and map proteins inside tissue. CellScape XR, an instrument that images many proteins at once in intact tissue sections, was demonstrated in April 2026 with 208 antibodies across 12 human tissue samples, and timsMRMS pairs ion mobility with magnetic-resonance mass spectrometry to analyze complex mixtures such as battery electrolytes.

Illumina, whose NovaSeq X Plus is its highest-throughput DNA sequencer, launched TruPath Genome in February 2026, a whole-genome workflow that prepares the DNA sample on the flow cell and uses fragment proximity to reconstruct longer-range information, linking variants on one chromosome copy and reading difficult regions at $395 per genome. Its SomaSeq assay, from the SomaLogic acquisition, measures 9,500 proteins on the same sequencers.

Thermo Fisher is moving protein-analysis technology into clinical testing and research at population scale. Its EXENT system automates the detection and classification of abnormal antibodies associated with multiple myeloma, reaching U.S. clinical availability in November 2025 as a follow-up test after specified abnormal findings. In 2026, it joined Singapore’s PRECISE-SG100K collaboration, bringing Olink protein assays and Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometry to a research cohort of more than 100,000 participants.

BMW's Neue Klasse is its first ground-up electric-vehicle platform in a generation, combining new batteries and sixth-generation drives with centralized computing: the iX3 sport-utility vehicle, its first model, replaces dozens of control units with four computers BMW calls superbrains and eliminates around 2,000 feet of wiring. The Debrecen plant built its 50,000th iX3 in July 2026, and Munich began series production of the second model, the i3, in August.

BYD, the Shenzhen automaker that sells more new-energy vehicles than any other company, builds its battery cells, power chips and charging hardware. It is now pairing a second-generation Blade Battery with a 1,500-kW charging network while home-market sales fall and exports climb.

CATL, the Chinese battery maker founded in 2011 that supplies about 40% of the global electric-vehicle battery market by trade estimates, has taken sodium-ion from the laboratory into products: Naxtra, a sodium-ion vehicle battery unveiled in April 2026, and TENER Sodium, a station-scale storage system unveiled in June that fits the same footprint as its lithium-iron-phosphate systems so developers can switch chemistry without redesign.

Geely Automobile Holdings, the Hong Kong-listed automaker inside Zhejiang Geely Holding, the group that also owns Volvo Cars, Polestar and Lotus, builds the Geely, Galaxy, Lynk & Co and Zeekr brands on one shared electric and hybrid architecture. That architecture spans the RMB69,800 Xingyuan hatchback, China's best-selling vehicle across all segments in 2025 and the first half of 2026, and the Zeekr 9X flagship, and exports rose 158% in the first half.

NIO, the Chinese electric-vehicle maker founded in November 2014 with the premium NIO, family ONVO and compact FIREFLY brands, has put its silicon and electrical architecture into volume production. The third-generation ES8, its large premium SUV, pairs a 900-volt architecture with the in-house NX9031 driving chip and reached 120,000 deliveries within 275 days.

Rivian, which established itself with the R1T pickup, R1S SUV and more than 40,000 Amazon delivery vans, designs its software and electrical architecture and is adapting them for Volkswagen through a joint venture. R2, a $57,990 midsize SUV built on a new architecture and a new line in Normal, Illinois, began deliveries in June 2026 and gave the company its second vehicle platform.

Founded in 2017, the private U.S. defense company builds military drones and autonomy software, including the Fury aircraft designed to fly alongside crewed fighters. It said revenue more than doubled to $2.2 billion in 2025 and raised $5 billion in May 2026 at a $61 billion valuation; it does not publish audited accounts.

GE Aerospace, whose CFM International joint venture with Safran powers most narrowbody airliners, is engineering engines that stay on the wing longer. LEAP-1B turbine durability upgrades certified in July 2026 carry a redesigned high-pressure blade built to survive hot, sandy air, and the same month it flew a hybrid-electric test aircraft above 30,000 feet with NASA, BETA Technologies and Boeing.

Rolls-Royce, the British engine maker that also builds defence propulsion and small modular reactors, was founded more than a century ago in 1906. It is now fixing the Trent 1000. Its XE upgrade replaces the high-pressure turbine blade with a redesign carrying 40% more cooling flow so Boeing 787s fly longer between maintenance visits, and almost half the Trent 1000 TEN fleet carried the new blades by July 2026. Sweden's Videberg Kraft chose its SMR for three reactors in June, following the UK's first SMR design contract in April.

Safran, the French aerospace, defense and security group, has a 50/50 CFM International joint venture with GE Aerospace that builds LEAP engines on Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. By July 2026, 40% of LEAP-1A engines carried redesigned turbine hardware. CFM says the engines double time on wing, and 70% used its reverse-bleed automated cooling technology. Safran also makes helicopter engines and the M88, an afterburning turbofan engine.

SpaceX, which was founded in 2002, went public in June, in the largest IPO on record, raising $75 billion on Nasdaq at a $1.77 trillion valuation. The company made orbital rockets reusable and then used that cost advantage to build Starlink, a satellite broadband network that is now its largest business. In 2026 it became a conglomerate. In February it absorbed xAI, Elon Musk's AI company (the Grok models, the X platform and the Colossus data centers), in an all-stock combination that Musk justified with a plan to put AI data centers in orbit. In August it closed a $60 billion stock purchase of Cursor, the AI coding tool. Alongside all that, the company is aiming to use Starlink capacity to compete with wireless carriers with plans for small base stations across the U.S. in addition to its satellites.

ABB, the Swiss electrical-equipment and automation group whose switchgear, drives and motors built its business in factories, is now redesigning the electrical architecture of AI data centers. Its HiPerGuard backup-power system connects directly to the medium-voltage grid, removing a conversion stage that adds equipment, heat and energy losses.

Caterpillar, the heavy-equipment maker, is adapting autonomous-haulage technology from giant open-pit mines to smaller quarries. Its MineStar Command system uses onboard sensing, route-control software and remote supervision to operate haul trucks without drivers.

The Moline, Illinois maker of John Deere tractors was founded in 1837, when blacksmith John Deere invented a self-cleaning steel plow. The company, which makes combines and sprayers, is the largest farm-equipment company and a precision agricultural pioneer.

Founded in 1910, the engineering conglomerate Hitachi is now applying AI to the operation of trains and other infrastructure, with deployment extending beyond individual pilots.

Midea, the Foshan, China appliance group, is the world's largest maker of home appliances by volume. Now, through its acquisition of KUKA, which Midea finalized in 2022, it is also one of the four biggest industrial-robot makers. Its PortaSplit, a split air conditioner that needs no permanent installation, has sold more than 300,000 units in Europe since 2024 with efficiency Stiftung Warentest found comparable to some installed systems, and its humanoid, Midea U, has worked in a washing-machine plant for more than two months.

Siemens, the industrial group founded in 1847, has consistently been an early adopter of emerging technologies. Its TIA Portal platform gives the company a built-in distribution channel to more than 600,000 users for Eigen Engineering Agent, an AI system that writes control code, configures equipment and validates automation projects.

Delta Electronics, the Taiwanese supplier of power supplies, fans and cooling hardware, supplies the power conversion and liquid cooling inside AI data centers. Its GoCool 3MW coolant distribution unit, which pumps chilled liquid through loops to the racks, was shipping to AI data centers by March 2026, and data-center business made up more than half of first-half revenue, which grew 41%. It puts 8% to 9% of revenue into R&D each year.

First Solar, the largest U.S.-headquartered solar manufacturer, makes panels from cadmium telluride deposited as a thin semiconductor layer on glass, and passed 100 GW of cumulative module sales in Q2 2026. CuRe, a cell chemistry that replaces copper in the semiconductor to raise lifetime energy output, reached production in March 2026 when its Perrysburg, Ohio factory built the first CuRe module on the Series 6 line; the plant completed permanent conversion in the first half.

Siemens Energy, spun off from Siemens, makes gas turbines, grid equipment and industrial electrolysers and owns wind-turbine maker Siemens Gamesa. Its E-STATCOM at TenneT's Mehrum site in Germany, reportedly the first supercapacitor-based STATCOM on a live transmission grid, replaces the steadying effect of spinning generators as wind and solar displace them, injecting up to 200 MW of active power for seconds to support grid frequency.

SLB, the oilfield-services company formerly known as Schlumberger, is automating well construction. It reported more than 100 remote and automated cementing jobs by July 2026. Those jobs include a deployment for Shell at Velox-1 in Egypt. SLB also offers Tela AI agents, a family of domain-specific AI assistants.

Vestas, the wind-turbine maker that returned to offshore wind with its 2020 acquisition of MHI Vestas Offshore, continues to gain traction with its V236-15.0 MW turbine. The model has a 15 MW capacity and a rotor 236 metres across, allowing developers to generate more electricity per turbine and build large wind farms with fewer machines. Vestas reached 100 V236 turbines installed offshore in June, and Poland’s Baltic Power project is installing 76 more.

Apple, the Cupertino company that helped define the smartphone almost two decades ago, has steadily grown over the past five years even as critics charge it with falling behind in the AI race. Its R&D reached $11.7 billion in the June 2026 quarter, up from $8.9 billion a year earlier.

Huawei, the Shenzhen telecommunications giant behind the Mate smartphones, designs its Kirin phone chips, Ascend AI accelerators and HarmonyOS, its operating system after U.S. sanctions cut it off from Western suppliers in 2020. Huawei now also sells Ascend AI processors, the networks that connect them and software for training models as China's main alternative to NVIDIA.

Lenovo’s software engineering reached teams and officials at the 2026 World Cup. FIFA reported that its image-stabilization algorithm steadied referee-camera feeds; Lenovo also supported player scans used for offside tracking, and all 48 teams interacted with the jointly developed AI Pro assistant for querying match data and footage. Beyond the stadium, its Qira personal agent began rolling out across PCs, tablets and phones in March, carrying context between devices.

The Chinese multinational consumer electronics and software company has diversified into EVs. An electric-vehicle launch in 2024 took the smartphone and connected-device maker into a new industry. It also designs its Xring processors, its line of high-performance 3-nanometer mobile system-on-chips for mobile devices. In addition, its HyperOS, marketed as “Human x Car x Home,” links phones, cars and home devices through one operating system.