When it comes to artificial intelligence, a handful of publicly traded companies tend to dominate the discussion. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla get the lion’s share of the attention – and deservedly so. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find a host of other companies laying the groundwork for the next layer of AI disruption.
Futurum Equities, a new division of the tech research company Futurum Group, has compiled a list of disruptors, who despite not being among Wall Street’s vaunted Magnificent 7, are making waves in the AI world. Rankings were derived using a proprietary algorithm that examines both the company’s current state and its expected future trajectory.
All of Futurum’s picks — an evolving list, the company notes — are publicly traded. (Qualcomm, Dell and Cisco appeared on prior, unreleased versions.)
Here’s a look at the companies Futurum says are worth watching.
1) Broadcom
Futurum gave the semiconductor developer and manufacturer, which it dubs “the glue holding the AI infrastructure together,” top marks, citing a recent $10 billion deal, widely believed to be with OpenAI to provide custom AI chips or XPUs. “Broadcom isn’t just supplying parts” but is “becoming the toll collector across silicon, networking, and software,,” researchers wrote.
2) Taiwan Semiconductor
TSMC might be Nvidia’s foundry partner, but it could be in a better position than the Mag 7 giant to capitalize on the AI boom: Sales were up 34% year over year in August and the percentage of revenue from AI continues to grow. “If Nvidia is the brain of AI, TSMC is the beating heart, pumping advanced silicon into every corner of the digital economy, making it indispensable long term,” wrote Futurum.
3) Palantir
The AI-driven data mining company has seen revenues top $1 billion this quarter, making it indispensable to governments around the world. While other companies make promises, Futurum wrote, Palantir is “building the control layer for how AI actually runs in the real world.”
4) ASML
Declared “the kingmaker behind the new digital economy,” ASML is the single point of control for advanced compute, the hardware and infrastructure required to train AI models, researchers wrote. Nvidia and Intel’s recently announced deal to co-develop CPU chips will only deepen the industry’s reliance on ASML, they added.
5) Oracle
The epicenter of cloud storage for AI companies, Oracle has established itself as a foundation of the AI business, boasting a long list of top-tier clients. “Oracle has the contracts, infrastructure, and data moat to be one of the defining winners of the AI economy,” the report reads.
6) Astera Labs
As something of a tollbooth between accelerators, memory, and storage, Astera Labs has seen its revenues climb as it relieves bottlenecks in the AI world. “Compute may be the engine, but connectivity is the oil and Astera is selling the refineries, pipelines, and control valves, shaping the AI cycle rather than just riding it,” wrote Futurum.
7) AMD
While Nvidia remains the undisputed king of AI chips, there’s plenty of room for challengers to the throne. AMD still provides a key part of the AI infrastructure and its partnership with TSMC gives it a boost, too.
8) Cloudflare
Calling Cloudflare “the gatekeeper of the modern internet,” Futurum notes that the company carries nearly 20% of global online traffic. And it’s growing, cutting latency and making AI agents more responsive.
9) Crowdstrike
If Cloudflare is the gatekeeper, Crowdstrike is the shield for enterprise users. Once focused on endpoint protection, Crowdstrike is evolving, Futurum says, adding an autonomous security layer for AI infrastructure — a layer that will become increasingly necessary, researchers said
10) Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto has moved beyond firewalls to build platform-led AI security that can scale with enterprise customers. Futurum’s score difference between Palo Alto and Crowdstrike was one-tenth of a point, a virtual tie. And researchers wrote the company was “building one of the most efficient scaled enterprise software models in the market.”
