Anduril tops CNBC Disruptor 50 checklist as curiosity in protection tech booms

This 12 months’s Disruptor 50 list, topped by Anduril within the No. 1 spot, after which OpenAI, showcases 50 firms which might be difficult the established order and utilizing expertise (most frequently, AI) to rework a spread of industries.

What’s notably notable about this 12 months’s checklist is how the sectors represented illustrate key developments not simply in expertise and VC, but additionally in politics and society. That is the primary time within the 13 years of the Disruptor 50 checklist that it has been topped by a protection tech firm. The protection tech sector is not simply represented by Anduril, with Flock Security, Saronic Applied sciences, and Defend AI additionally making the 2025 checklist.

Their scope and scale show a rising development. The 4 firms have a mixed worth of greater than $45 billion and have raised nearly $10 billion from buyers. They’ve geographic range – all are headquartered outdoors Silicon Valley. And their focuses are different. Flock Safety (No. 7 on this 12 months’s checklist) makes safety {hardware} and software program. Saronic (No. 19) builds unmanned maritime vessels. Shield AI (No. 38) is an autonomous drone firm.

Past the businesses targeted on constructing bodily strategies of protection, there’s additionally Abnormal AI (No. 25), a cybersecurity firm taking part in a key function in defending methods from assaults that prey on human behavioral weaknesses. Gecko Robotics (No. 30) deploys its robots to seize knowledge in regards to the integrity of vital property, together with plane carriers, naval ships, and missile silos. 

The sector’s development is predicted to speed up due to a surge of funding. Final week, Anduril announced a new $2.5 billion round of funding at a valuation — $30.5 billion — that’s double the valuation of its earlier spherical of funding. Saronic and Defend AI have additionally closed main fundraising rounds in 2025, in line with Pitchbook; $600 million in Saronic’s case.

AI infrastructure firm Scale AI (No. 28) secured a landmark deal last August with the Division of Protection’s Chief Digital and Synthetic Intelligence Workplace to advance AI capabilities for the U.S. army. Scale AI additionally introduced a new multi-million dollar deal with the DoD in March to assist with “Thunderforge,” an initiative to develop AI brokers for U.S. army planning and operations that additionally consists of Anduril.

The surge in funding comes as President Trump has proposed a rise in protection spending, with a give attention to modernizing army capabilities and opening alternatives past the legacy protection sector. There’s additionally an growing give attention to dual-use applied sciences: Anduril took over Microsoft’s augmented actuality headset program that was within the works with the army, after which on the finish of Could introduced a cope with Meta to create VR and AR devices for use by the Army.

Together with the rise of army tech, the explosion in generative AI’s capabilities is driving the transformation of a spread of sectors, from farming to regulation and robotics. Throughout the checklist, there are 17 enterprise tech firms, seven fintechs, 4 health-care firms, 4 in meals/agriculture, and three every in transportation and biotech. 

AI-focused investments and better valuations are on full show up and down this 12 months’s Disruptor 50 checklist. The thirteenth annual Disruptor 50 class is valued at $798 billion, way over final 12 months’s $436 billion complete, due largely to OpenAI’s $300 billion valuation. The overall quantity the businesses have raised elevated to $127 billion, up from $70 billion final 12 months.

It is clear that the generative AI revolution has reworked the startup ecosystem in addition to the checklist, with 20 newcomers this 12 months. Solely 11 firms on this 12 months’s checklist had been Disruptors earlier than the launch of ChatGPT, and lots of in that group — together with Anduril, Databricks, and Canva — have succeeded due to their embrace of gen AI.

Greater than two-thirds of firms on this 12 months’s D50 checklist — 38 firms — mentioned that AI is “vital to their enterprise,” up from 34 final 12 months. And 21 of this 12 months’s firms say generative AI is their important expertise, up from 13 final 12 months.

This displays enterprise capital’s growing give attention to AI: about 58% of worldwide VC {dollars} invested within the first quarter went into AI and machine studying startups, whereas in North America, 70% of deal worth went into AI and machine studying startups. And the funding numbers proceed to develop, with $73 billion raised within the first quarter, greater than half of final 12 months’s complete, although that is largely attributable to OpenAI’s $40 billion spherical, led by SoftBank.

AI is being utilized in a spread of numerous use circumstances by Disruptors, together with regulation (Harvey), preventing crime (Flock Safety), and within the physician’s workplace (Abridge and Rad AI). However the sector with essentially the most firms on this 12 months’s Disruptor 50 checklist is enterprise AI, with 17 firms (up from 14 final 12 months). These vary from Databricks, which helps firms mine their knowledge, to Glean, which allows its clients to construct customized AI apps and customized search instruments, to collaborative workspace and note-taking software Notion.

Design platform Canva has more and more invested in AI and made AI options the middle of its toolkit. With partnerships with ChatGPT and Anthropic (No. 4 on this 12 months’s checklist), and the acquisition of a number of AI-powered firms previously 12 months, CEO Melanie Perkins is predicted to take her $32 billion firm public within the subsequent 12 months. “We have repeatedly been investing on this area with magic suggestions, and so forth, through the years with generative AI,” mentioned Perkins. “With the ability to have that magic embedded as you are writing your paperwork and your shows, having the ability to have Canva AI … it is actually been an extension of that preliminary promise that we have needed to clients, to empower the world, to design, to proceed to place the criminal activity to best expertise of their fingers.” 

Perkins says Canva has a three-pronged strategy to AI: integrating the perfect merchandise which might be obtainable, deeply investing within the areas wanted to carry the experience to their clients, and having a platform the place the most recent AI merchandise and different apps can come onto Canva and be accessed by the neighborhood.

She is optimistic in regards to the potential for AI to be a democratizing drive for Canva’s 220 million clients world wide. “I believe it is critically vital that because the world of humanity, we use AI to really raise up each single one who lives right here, to assist everybody have their fundamental human wants being met,” she mentioned. “And I believe there’s a big alternative for us to be dreaming greater about what we wish with expertise accelerating. I believe there’s a big alternative to rethink what we’re doing with it and guaranteeing that it is serving our wants.”