Anduril tops 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list as interest and investment in defense tech booms

This year's Disruptor 50 list, topped by Anduril in the No. 1 spot, and then OpenAI, showcases 50 companies that are challenging the status quo and using technology (most often, AI) to transform a range of industries.

What's particularly notable about this year's list is how the sectors represented illustrate key trends not just in technology and VC, but also in politics and society. This is the first time in the 13 years of the Disruptor 50 list that it's been topped by a defense tech company. The defense tech sector isn't just represented by Anduril, with Flock Safety, Saronic Technologies and Shield AI also making the 2025 list.

Their scope and scale demonstrate a rising trend. The four companies have a combined value of more than $45 billion and have raised almost $10 billion from investors. They have geographic diversity – all are headquartered outside Silicon Valley. And their focuses are varied. Flock Safety (No. 7 on this year's list) makes security hardware and software. Saronic (No. 19) builds unmanned maritime vessels. Shield AI (No. 38) is an autonomous drone company.

Beyond the companies focused on building physical methods of defense, there is also Abnormal AI (No. 25), a cybersecurity company playing a key role in protecting systems from attacks that prey on human behavioral weaknesses. Gecko Robotics (No. 30) deploys its robots to capture data about the integrity of critical assets, including aircraft carriers, naval ships and missile silos.

The sector's growth is expected to accelerate thanks to a surge of funding. Last week, Anduril announced a new $2.5 billion round of funding at a valuation — $30.5 billion — that is double the valuation of its previous round of funding. Saronic and Shield AI have also closed major fundraising rounds in 2025, according to Pitchbook; $600 million in Saronic's case.

AI infrastructure company Scale AI (No. 28) secured a landmark deal last August with the Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to advance AI capabilities for the U.S. military. Scale AI also announced a new multimillion-dollar deal with the DOD in March to help with "Thunderforge," an initiative to develop AI agents for U.S. military planning and operations that also includes Anduril.

The surge in funding comes as President Donald Trump has proposed an increase in defense spending, with a focus on modernizing military capabilities and opening opportunities beyond the legacy defense sector. There is also an increasing focus on dual-use technologies: Anduril took over Microsoft's augmented reality headset program that was in the works with the military, and then at the end of May announced a deal with Meta to create VR and AR devices for use by the Army.

Along with the rise of military tech, the explosion in generative AI's capabilities is driving the transformation of a range of sectors, from farming to law and robotics. Across the list, there are 17 enterprise tech companies, seven fintechs, four health-care companies, four in food/agriculture, and three each in transportation and biotech.

Artificial intelligence-focused investments and higher valuations are on full display up and down this year's Disruptor 50 list. The 13th annual Disruptor 50 class is valued at $798 billion, far more than last year's $436 billion total, due in large part to OpenAI's $300 billion valuation. The total amount the companies have raised increased to $127 billion, up from $70 billion last year.

It's clear that the generative AI revolution has transformed the startup ecosystem as well as the list, with 20 newcomers this year. Only 11 companies on this year's list were Disruptors before the launch of ChatGPT, and many in that group — including Anduril, Databricks and Canva — have succeeded because of their embrace of gen AI.

More than two-thirds of companies on this year's D50 list — 38 companies — said that AI is "critical to their business," up from 34 last year. And 21 of this year's companies say generative AI is their essential technology, up from 13 last year.

This reflects venture capital's increasing focus on AI: about 58% of global VC dollars invested in the first quarter went into AI and machine learning startups, while in North America, 70% of deal value went into AI and machine learning startups. And the funding numbers continue to grow, with $73 billion raised in the first quarter, more than half of last year's total, though that's largely due to OpenAI's $40 billion round, led by SoftBank.

AI is being used in a range of diverse use cases by Disruptors, including law (Harvey), fighting crime (Flock Safety), and in the doctor's office (Abridge and Rad AI). But the sector with the most companies on this year's Disruptor 50 list is enterprise AI, with 17 companies (up from 14 last year). These range from Databricks, which helps companies mine their data, to Glean, which enables its customers to build custom AI apps and custom search tools, to collaborative workspace and note-taking tool Notion.

Design platform Canva has increasingly invested in artificial intelligence and made AI features the center of its toolkit. With partnerships with ChatGPT and Anthropic (No. 4 on this year's list), and the acquisition of several AI-powered companies in the past year, CEO Melanie Perkins is expected to take her $32 billion company public in the next year. "We've continuously been investing in this space with magic recommendations, and so forth, over the years with generative AI," said Perkins. "Being able to have that magic embedded as you're writing your documents and your presentations, being able to have Canva AI … it's really been an extension of that initial promise that we've had to customers, to empower the world, to design, to continue to put the latest to greatest technology in their hands."

Perkins says Canva has a three-pronged approach to AI: integrating the best products that are available, deeply investing in the areas needed to bring the expertise to their customers, and having a platform where the newest AI products and other apps can come onto Canva and be accessed by the community.

She is optimistic about the potential for AI to be a democratizing force for Canva's 220 million customers around the world. "I think it's critically important that as the world of humanity, we use AI to truly lift up every single person who lives here, to help everyone have their basic human needs being met," she said. "And I think there is a huge opportunity for us to be dreaming bigger about what we want with technology accelerating. I think there is a huge opportunity to rethink what we're doing with it and ensuring that it's serving our needs."