The companies on the Global 500 employ 70.2 million people, and their revenue represents more than one-third of the world’s GDP.

Fortune Global 500

The corporations on our annual list of the world's 500 largest companies combined to generate $41.7 trillion in revenue over the past year.

The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

The inaugural Fortune Asia Future 30, in partnership with BCG, recognizes companies with long-term growth potential.

Fortune Asia Future 30

The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies delivered a record $41 trillion in aggregate revenues.

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

These 52 companies from across the globe are doing well by doing good.

Change the World

Welcome to the inaugural Fortune Future 50, our new ranking of companies best positioned for breakout growth.

The Future 50

Nike, Cisco, MasterCard, SABMiller, Vodafone, Google—and 45 other companies that are doing well by doing good.

Future 50

Overall Score

Sector

Industry

Website

Employees

HQ Location

Revenues ($M) (Past 12 Months)

Profits ($M) (Past 12 Months)

Market Value as of Oct. 9, 2019 ($M)

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

BYD, once backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is arguably China’s biggest EV success story. The company’s experience with battery production could be BYD’s secret sauce, giving it higher margins by consolidating its supply chains. The company's international expansion is now a core growth strategy, supported by strong sales growth and manufacturing investments in markets including Thailand, Brazil, Hungary, and Turkey.

BYD (BYDDY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

Companies

BYD | Fortune

BYD (BYDDY): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Roger Atkins, Founder, Electric Vehicles Outlook (Appearing Virtually) Christopher Beddor, Deputy China Research Director, Gaveka Paul Gong,  Executive Director, Autos Research, Ubs

Innovation Forum 2024: Winning The Global Ev Race

Conferences

Innovation Forum 2024: Who’s Winning The Global Ev Race?

Hey, everyone, very excited about this panel. I think we all kind of woke up to uh the strength of the Chinese ev sector in the past year. Um I want to start by by pointing out two milestones and the first milestone I would like Chris to respond to last year, China became the world's top auto exporter beating out Japan how much of that is due to evs uh it's basically fully an EV story. Um So the story of China's auto sector is basically that prior to about 2021 the entire industry in terms of production was actually on something of a slight down slope. Uh And then the EV transition happened. So I realized that most people have just kind of attuned to it over the past year or so, but it's actually been going on since about uh you can date it at various points. But we, we take about 2021 as really the the key moment and that growth has been almost entirely from EVs. Uh So what you're looking at is every single year, consumers within China have bought about 2 million more evs than the previous year. Give or take. Um at the same time, uh industrial internal combustion engine vehicles have actually been in decline. The transition has been so rapid that many of the legacy automakers are actually left with excess spare capacity. So they've been started exporting that abroad. So the exports start again around 2021 is when you start to see the increase. And that's es which has caught all the news, but it's also just legacy it vehicles as well. So where we are right now is sort of the inevitable discussions about. Ok, well, have we been producing too much? Is there excess capacity? How many price cuts are manufacturers going to have to give? Uh is there going to be market exits? And then of course, abroad, you're seeing the discussions about what do we do with these extremely competitive Chinese evs and I want to bring in Paul now and I want to thank Paul for giving us your time as you're heading to the airport later today. Um But I want to ask you about the other big milestone last year, which was Byd, beating Tesla as the world's largest seller of battery electric vehicles. And that's specifically saying that because I know in terms of all electric vehicles that beat Tesla ages ago, but, but you know, is Byd just built different, what is it about this company that's made it so successful? Yeah, sure. Um Well, at U Bs, we like to tear down ev five years ago, we had the Tesla Model three tear down and we were shocked how much Tesla was ahead in terms of technology leadership. It was several years ahead. But last year when we had the by DC O tear down this time, we find basically there is little gap of the technology but just different priorities. For example, the Tesla will might prioritize the top speed byp has a bigger space. Tesla has better autom driving a function while BYP has five G connection and the infotainment system that is better. But more importantly is when we find this BYD built by BC O which is highly comparable to the model three as a medium size, its cost is about 15% lower even than the Tesla Shanghai factory production. Thanks to the system integration, thanks to the smart design. And so we were shocked how fast Boyd has caught up in terms of this gap. And behind of that at the moment of our TRB ID has 70,000 R and D engineers as a comparative Tesla has 120,000 total number of employees including workers and sales people. And they recruited another 30,000 last year from the fresh grad. And yesterday, the report is fine annual report that was 100,000 R and D engineers that is the biggest team in the world and almost fully dedicated within the EV and the supply chain. Um I want to bring in Roger for this next question because we talk a lot about EV companies, car makers, but there's more into the car than just, you know, the car, there's components and there's the batteries. Um How is the battery making sector being transformed by this big EV boom? Uh Well, good evening everybody. Hello, Nicholas and, and to add to my panel, um my fellow panelists this all began actually in really 2015 or a little bit before it was all part of the made in China 2025 ambition. And at the heart of that indeed is the battery. Uh So if you look at how China has developed the one thing they've done incredibly successfully as have Tesla is vertical integration is the ability to have the ecosystem which is very much centered around the battery. So when you look at the development in China of companies like Byd, like CATL, like a number of other key companies that's at the core of why Asia now in general, because you've seen similar activity, of course in, in South Korea and in Japan, um very much to a lesser extent, but certainly more advanced than, than Europe. So Europe now is playing a frantic game of catch up and the vertical integration isn't just about making a battery. Of course, there's the downstream and upstream sides to both of those things and the critical minerals focus again that China put into that made in China 2025 plan is at the heart is at the core of where this all is. So I would say it's about having long term strategic thinking, it's about having vertical integration. And then the other core part which is only now emerging is joining up the renewable energy revolution, new energy with electric vehicles, with the battery in the middle. So the battery then becomes part of that system if you like it enhances both new mobility and new energy. And I think it's quite, it's quite useful in many ways that the Chinese call their electric vehicles, new energy vehicles, not ev si think that's a very, that's visionary quite frankly. So II I do want to stick on this topic of industrial policy. You know, EVs are now one of it's like solar, it's like wind, it's an area where China made a very big long term bet and it appears to be successful. Um But now you know that they're starting to withdraw support, Robin Zung was to the media talking about how the market to be much more market driven going forward. You know what as Beijing kind of changed its approach to the sector, how is EV is going to change, going to be in the next few years and maybe Chris, you can, you can take that question. Yeah, I think that so where we're at in this movie right now is that you do hear a lot of talk within the government about the potential for, maybe there is excess capacity and maybe we do need to take some steps to, uh, to address that. So, some of the things that the government is doing at this point is, uh, they've already removed cash subsidies. Um, they are capping the, um, the exemption that you get on auto taxes and they're going to lower that. So basically taking away incentives uh that they had put in place and Paul is exactly right. This is essentially a creature of industrial policy at some level. Um But at the end of the day, I mean, what's happening here just like you said, it's happened before with solar. Um and it's happening now with evs, uh China is essentially doubling down on industrial policy. Um EVs are kind of the topic of the moment, there'll be something else, uh you know, after evs um and ultimately how this resolves itself is uh through, you know, prices going down market, clearing and so forth, some manufacturers will probably exit the market. Um So I think that we're, we're sort of like midway through this movie. Um But I think we still got a ways to go. Um I want to go back to you Roger. Um You know, again, the headlines right now, the discussion about companies invest a lot in evs, but now maybe there's some overinvestment of overcapacity, uh dealers in the US are complaining about ev staying on lots. Um And we've seen this cycle before where in the cycle do you think we are in terms of ev demand and, and customer um interest in evs? I really, that's at the heart of this, this whole arena now. I think it's a great question. Um, cycles, you know, we've seen many cycles in human history, you know, in human history, the rise and fall of empire, um economic cycles, the previous panel was talking about where we are, you know, Japan interest rates, the global economic system and yeah, cycles are what they are. And within the automotive industry, I've been in that 40 years, half of that time has been in and around electric vehicles. I've seen a number of cycles but the two big differences, I think now that sit over what happens next are climate change because that hasn't happened at all in human history before. So that cuts right across a number of these cycles, how they work and why they work. And then the other one a bit as the panel were alluding to earlier is demographics, an aging population changes so much. So my personal view, I suppose it's a professional view because that's kind of what I do. Um is I don't think massive option of electric vehicles should or will ever happen. And the reason for saying that is I think the the bigger shift is going to be towards the artificial inspired um uh driverless vehicle technology, uh ride sharing, etcetera, etcetera. Because if you combine an increasingly urbanized city based global population as an aging population with a number of other factors which I won't go through them all. And I think it all leads you down to that. What's that phrase? Uh Necessity is the mother of invention? Um, so I, I don't think we're ever gonna see mass adoption of evs because I don't think that the global car market of 80 million a year is ever gonna be that big again. I think it's gonna come down to 70 60 50 40 million because we'll have, we'll just share more because we have to and I, I want to ask a similar question to you, Paul. Um looking at China specifically, you know, the China Car Association, I believe they're predicting 25% ev growth this year compared to 36% last year and 96% the year before that. So slowing down. Um What does that mean for China's EV sector? You know, a lot of these loss making companies, there's profitability concerns, there's a price war going on as ev growth in China slows, what does that mean for the industry? Well, I mean, from the growth rate point of view because nowadays you have a bigger base. So it seems that the growth rate might slow down a little bit, which might not necessarily be the case because you are going to have another rebalancing of the pricing and the declining of the DC M price as well as the supply chain efficiency. Again, that could bring the UV back into the competitiveness versus the ice car. Again, um What we are seeing is uh the penetration rate continues to raise B to high single DJ or about 10% every single year. And uh the growth slowdown is more like a de or base rather than really a significant slowdown. I think there is a huge difference between China versus the Western market right now. What we are saying is in Europe and in us, the subsidies or the uh is either existing in Germany or tightening in France or us. But in China, the carmakers has really brought down the e cost back on par versus the ice and the introduction and the market competition has made them so competitive that it is indeed going to be fully. Yeah. Uh you know, another, another question for you, Paul that we were talking earlier, you know, there's this, there's this big battery electric vehicle versus hybrid vehicle debate um in the global ev sector, you know, everyone talks about Toyota made this big kept with hybrids, everyone made fun of them and now they have record sales. Um What's the EV versus hybrid discussion like in China? Um It's more or less really leaving to the market to design. Uh Just now. Um Roger has emphasized the made in China 2025 the government policies, but I think what has been underappreciated in this market is really the market for the competition. When you consider that the US is like 1 million a year. Tesla has more than half the market share in Europe. You have Volkswagen and these traditional car makers. But in China, Tesla is just 10% out of this 9 million units, Volkswagen. Less than 5% 85% of them are Chinese, the start up the incumbent transformation, the joining of the tech giant all in this fierce competition. And of course, not everyone is going to make but the excited it is this a market force that has bought the innovation efficiency again. And when you mentioned about this planing hybrid, actually, the government never plan the extended range electric vehicle, never in the plant, but it was the the auto that bought this and it was a market force that brought this into the center stage. Um But Nicholas can I just say in terms of cycles, we've been here before. Um history teaches us a lot in the United States when Henry Ford initiated the internal combustion indus industry uh for a number of decades. In the 19 twenties and thirties, there were hundreds and hundreds of car companies just like there've been lots hundreds of electric vehicle companies in China. And what happened is over time, they all, they all diminish because and then you know, the cream rises to the top that happens. And also what we've seen before was when China uh Japan had its export onslaught into the United States and Europe back in the 19 seventies and eighties. Um the Europeans then the Americans as well uh imposed tariffs. And then the way the Japanese got around that was to embed facilities, production plants in those locations. We're now already seeing that with Byd in Hungary, for example, building batteries. So, so if you like the play, we've seen it before. This story, this movie that my friends have. Uh I like the description, by the way, movie we've in these scenes before different access, same scene. Um It's good, you mentioned be waiting hungry because um there is obviously this like overseas expansion in terms of sales and in terms of manufacturing, that's potentially triggering a protectionist backlash in Europe in the US, potentially even like Brazil, you know, very quickly, Chris, I mean, should China's Ed companies be worried about this backlash or will it just kind of play out? Ok. Oh, they should be, I think they already are. Um So there's protection is upcoming. It's really just a question of how much. Uh so I think the focus right now is of course on the EU um and its anti subsidy probe into Chinese uh Chinese autos. Um Also, you're hearing noises from the Biden administration as you mentioned, Brazil. Um So it's really, I mean, we, we basically agree with consensus that you'll see more tariffs saying in the Eu um that said, I think that, you know how they're responding in terms of locating more production facilities abroad. That's the right way to go. I also think that the key factor is going to be the demand in other emerging markets. And there, you've got a really mixed picture. I mean, you've got a group of countries like uh like South Africa, like Indonesia that maybe don't want to scrutinize Chinese imports too much because they sell other things to China. You've got a group that maybe uh like Russia depends on China for other needs. Um So really, once you go through all that list of emerging markets and think through what are the protectionists like, how likely is that? Is that to be uh you get a very, very mixed picture. Final word Chris, very quick. We talked about China having an industrial policy playbook for solar for wind, for evs. Are we going to see it again in another industry? Yes, that's, that's the easiest question you asked. Uh um So I think uh just, just my two cents would be like uh I think that China is currently doubling down on industrial policy. I think that what you're seeing in EVs is of course a story about Chinese CV S and EVs more broadly. Uh but it's also a story about how China conducts industrial policy. Um as Paul mentioned, there is a lot of market forces in there, but there's also a tremendous amount of, I mean, it's a Leninist system, you know, the, the central leadership will say we want to target a certain industry. Everyone focuses on that it's conducted in a campaign style. They go forward at some point. There's a recognition we've gone too far. They pull it back. I think we're currently sort of in the process of that for evs. But the key is that what you're seeing in evs is just a preview. So they're doubling down, there's gonna be more to come. Um So can I just say, I think this whole thing is about energy, it's about resources. It, it always has been, that's the way the world's always worked. So I think the battery and this marriage between new mobility and energy. That's the key. Yeah. So we're at the end of our journey for evs and we should charge ahead to our next session. But before that, I want everyone to thank Chris Paul and Roger for joining us today.

Facilitators: 
Chris Rudd, Founder and CEO, ChiByDesign; Clinical Professor of Practice, Institute of Design 
Susie Wise, Adjunct Professor, Stanford University d.school; Author, Design for Belonging 

Brainstorm Design 2022 - Design For Belonging

Chris Rudd, Founder and CEO, ChiByDesign; Clinical Professor of Practice, Institute of Design 
Susie Wise, Adjunct Professor, Author, Design for Belonging 

The secret sauce behind Slack’s product development

Design

Slack's product leads discuss the app’s design principles.

Slack’s Tamar Yehoshua and Ethan Eismann talk about the app’s design principles.

I'm fascinated by these, uh, examples of conversations that you have with the Ambassadors network. But how do you, um, go deeper than that? And make sure you understand You know how the company works and how it's organized and what its processes are and what is trying to accomplish, because I suspect that being able to understand that then enables you to frequently tell customers how to use, uh, slack in ways that they themselves they may not have a lot of using. Slack is change management. It's not taking what you did on email and taking that same way of working and translating that to slack. It's actually changing the way you work so that you get the most value out of it. So we have a number of the avenues where we get embedded with our customers and customer feedback. We have an amazing research team, uh, user research team, who spent a lot of time with our customers either doing with new users who've never used black before with experience tenured users. So they do a lot of the traditional user experience research, but they're also embedded with the team. So when we do large projects we embed a researcher with us from the beginning, So not only are we prototyping giving the prototypes were also doing traditional user studies. They also do what you would think of as more marketing type studies with things like MPs. What's the reaction? How are people liking our software? And then we also have our customer success team that they're the people who help implement flak at our large enterprises. They work very closely with us very closely with the product managers who work on specific features for their customers. So a lot of the product managers are in talking to customers with the customer success managers and then for the people who are not of a large the large enterprises. We have our customer experience team who responds to every tweet out there. We get a lot of love on and not always love. We call them beef tweets and love tweets. Uh, and we have our customer success. Our customer experience team responds to every single one, and then they give us feedback on the in the product or organization. So we have all these different avenues and product managers get feedback from all of them. I would say that while we have those avenues be what's crucial its product managers, its designers also the engineers. You can hear stories you know, translated to you from somebody else, you know? But there's nothing that beats actually sitting with the customer and hearing from them directly, because then you get the candid emotional, you know, sort of like this. This this response from them that helps you learn and understand their needs. I wonder if you could maybe tell me a little bit about this, uh, you know, question of how you use data and data analysis, Uh, tools because you've talked about, uh, very interactive things and the kind of directly back that you get from customers. But presumably there's a lot of information that you can also be that you can also glean just by looking and seeing how people are using the platform itself without having to interact with them at all. We have a difficult data analysis team, and we absolutely look at all the metrics and how the product is used. We, um we have a motto of data informed but not data driven, so that I know I'm giving you a lot of different mottoes here. But the, uh, we absolutely want to understand the data. We want to understand how people are using it, but you don't want to make product decisions purely on the data. You have to have an intuition of what's going to work better. The data is not always going to point you in the right direction, because let's take our on boarding close if you're If you, um if you look at the data to closely, sometimes it will cause you to just iterate on small improvements and not take a step back and, like, blow up a whole flow and redo it, it gets you to more incremental. It can get you stuck in more incremental improvements, but you have to know it. You have to know where the parts of your flow are breaking down. So we absolutely look at data. But like a credit to success criteria for the new you. I was not a metric. It was how people feel and use it. But then we measured everything to know what the impact was going to be and different things Go ahead. Do you think, um, so to tomorrow's point, um, you know we want to be data informed that data driven when we think about data, it's also much broader than, um, just the numbers. So, for example, in this redesign project, we had a number of signals that we were collecting. So one was obviously the feedback from these, uh, black champions, these sort of sophisticated users in the shared channel. We then created a separate group, which was another champions group. But it was folks who are a bit newer to slack, so these weren't admins. These are folks who had just been using flak for a few months at their organizations. We wanted to get their perspective on the design, and then we did new user studies. So we basically did usability studies, um, and did sort of on the ground user research with folks in New York. Um, this is pre covid, and these are folks who are new to slack. And so we had their perspective as well. And then we had the internal feedback. So all the people that slack who are using the new interface as well So we have these four vectors, and what was fascinating about that is, while by the end of the project. The team working on it knew that what we were building wouldn't satisfy 100% of people who use slack in 100% of their ways. We had a high level of confidence that we would know why would work for some people and why it might not work. For some people, it was fascinating and we had the shadow metric, which is will we get feedback on part of the that we hadn't predicted before launch. And you know, you talk about these big companies doing big launches. They don't know what's going to happen when they launch, you know, they just sort of launched out there and then hopefully it works. This was one of the first times that I've experienced launching something with a very high level of confidence that it would play out the way that we expected it, that some people would really be excited about this one thing. And then there might be a few people who are concerned about a specific part of the project. So we use all of those signals to have a real holistic sort of perspective on the different types of people who might use the product and we consider that different forms of data. You know, one of the things that is interesting about Flaccus that is designed to be so, um so inclusive of other products. I mean, it really does kind of work and play well with with other platforms. And that's part of the reason that people I love it, Um, but it's an interesting, uh, propositions of business strategy because there are other companies whose philosophy is more. Let's were trying to hurt people into our closed environment and keep them using our related products. We are an open platform that is definitely a part of our ethos is that we want you the customer, to be able to use the best of breed products, so you should be able to use whatever it is that is the best product for you, and you should integrate very seamlessly. We are the engagement layer were the engagement layer that can engage with any kind of product. You have any events you have, and we want to make sure that we make your other software that you have purchased your other software more valuable. You can go to slack and you can start a zoom call from straight within slack and you can default to all of black holes can be on June because that's what our customers want. And that's what makes it really easy and seamless. We're not going to be the best at everything. So we want our customers to have the best products, and we want them to come together and slap. We know that our customers spend all day every day in black, and we want that experience to be the best it can be. And we think if we focus on that on being a channel based messaging system that brings all of your that brings all of your systems together and your software together, we're going to be the best of that, and we're going to be really good at that, and we know we can be really good at that.

BYD

BYD in Fortune Rankings

BYD stock chart

Videos