The Future 50
The Top Ten
Snowflake
Information Technology
This cloud-computing company based in Bozeman, Mont., tops the Future 50 on the strength of its accommodation of the AI boom. A pioneer in warehousing databases in the cloud, Snowflake competes with giants, but also partners with them. It has teamed up with Nvidia to help customers develop large language models (LLMs), the key to generative AI, on Snowflake’s platform, and it offers easy-to-use interface tools for using Microsoft’s Azure cloud. The company has also been ahead of the curve in getting certified to work on public-sector cloud and AI projects. The result has been blistering growth: Analysts expect Snowflake to hit $2.75 billion in revenue in its current fiscal year, up 33% from the year prior. Snowflake’s shares are down considerably from the frothy peaks they hit after the company’s September 2020 IPO, but the company’s strong cash flow bodes well for better returns and continued growth.
Datadog
Information Technology
This company is a watchdog of sorts: It specializes in helping companies monitor the performance and security of their cloud operations. As more corporations have deployed LLMs and AI-driven data analytics tools in the cloud, Datadog has quickly rolled out well-received products to help them do their work. Among the New York City–based Datadog’s innovations: The company accepts user contributions to its software through an open-source model—which gives it early signals about what new functionalities its clients may want. The company is on pace to grow revenue by 23% in 2023, to $2.1 billion.
CrowdStrike Holdings
Information Technology
CrowdStrike, which went public in 2019, specializes in cybersecurity. It’s a big player in protection for “endpoints”—industry jargon for such devices as servers and desktop and laptop computers, where Dell is a major CrowdStrike partner. But like several other Future 50 top performers (including other cybersecurity companies, like No. 22 Palo Alto Networks), the Austin-based CrowdStrike has ridden the cloud to big gains. It’s one of the biggest security providers for users of Amazon Web Services (AWS); in October it announced that it had sold more than $1 billion in software through the AWS marketplace.
Roblox
Communication Services
The metaverse hasn’t yet turned into the gigantic business opportunity that everyone was enthusing about during the depths of the COVID pandemic. But Roblox, the online entertainment platform that lets users build their own games, is arguably that space’s biggest success story so far. Much of Gen Z has grown up playing or building Roblox games (or both); the platform claims more than 70 million daily users, most of whom are under 16, and much coveted by advertisers.
Li Auto
Consumer Discretionary
China is by far the world’s biggest electric-vehicle market, and Li Auto has carved out a fast-growing niche there: Analysts project that it will deliver more than 300,000 vehicles in 2023. (Above, a Li Auto workshop in Changzhou, China.) The company is on track to more than double its annual revenue this year, to $16 billion, and its stock has more than doubled since its July 2020 IPO. Beijing-based Li focuses primarily on sport-utility vehicles at the premium end of the market. To date it has sold only hybrids, but it plans to roll out its first battery EV, the Mega luxury SUV, at the end of the year, and follow up with three more full-battery EV models in 2024.
