Nvidia received the top spot in The Wall Street Journal’s first-ever Best Companies for the Future ranking, the Journal reported Monday. The list, which evaluates S&P 500 companies on how well they are positioned for coming challenges, placed Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Cisco Systems in the next four positions.
The ranking was compiled by Bendable Labs, a data analytics firm, for the WSJ Leadership Institute. It scored companies on 30 metrics from 20 data providers across six areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, supply-chain resilience and exposure to geopolitical risks, and corporate agility, according to the Journal.
Rick Wartzman, co-founder of Bendable Labs, told the Journal that the ranking is designed as a diagnostic tool rather than a prediction. “The data provide some insight into which companies are best positioned to deal with whatever comes next in a time of rapid change and great uncertainty,” Wartzman said.
Technology companies dominated the top of the list. Tech production and services firms hold a third of the top 100 spots, the Journal reported. Non-tech companies in the top 25 include Mastercard at No. 7, S&P Global at No. 13, Visa at No. 15, and drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly at Nos. 20 and 22, respectively.
The AI readiness category weighed seven measures, including an MIT FutureTech analysis that gauges how much companies have integrated AI into their operations based on securities filings. Martin Fleming, a research scientist at MIT FutureTech, told the Journal that about half of the S&P 500 are aggressively rolling out AI pilots. “The open question is how many of those pilots will succeed and how many will fail,” Fleming said.
Bigger companies tended to perform better in the ranking, though size was not the only factor. Advanced Micro Devices, with a market capitalization of around $850 billion, ranked No. 16 overall, scoring well on agility, innovation, and AI readiness. Broadcom, which is more than twice AMD’s size, ranked No. 110, held back by lower scores on AI readiness, talent readiness, and resilience, the Journal reported.
Apple, despite ranking No. 12 overall, placed 56th in AI readiness, trailing the other Magnificent Seven companies. The Journal reported that Bendable Labs concluded this may partly reflect Apple’s tendency to make limited public disclosures about its AI activities. Apple scored closer to peers on other innovation measures.
The talent readiness category considered how well companies meet the needs of Generation Z workers, who are expected to become the largest segment of the U.S. workforce by 2035, the Journal reported. Delta Air Lines topped that category. The ranking also factored in skills-based hiring, using data from Opportunity@Work to measure the extent to which companies open jobs to workers without bachelor’s degrees. Julia Nitschke, director of analytics at Opportunity@Work, told the Journal that excluding workers without degrees screens out half of the potential labor force.
The ranking’s methodology acknowledged limitations. Wartzman and Kelly Tang, Bendable’s chief data scientist, wrote in the Journal that the ranking is not a crystal ball but a measuring stick. “Although some things (such as patent filings) are easy to count, others (such as discerning how AI-ready employees are from their LinkedIn profiles) are inherently messy and difficult to establish,” they wrote.