For the last four years, Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards have celebrated technological breakthroughs that are changing the way we work and live. This year’s awards include 138 honors for innovations impacting everything from transportation and telecommunications to agriculture.
Arriving at that cadre of winners from a pool of 1,400 applicants requires many hours of work sifting through applications, scrutinizing projects, and deciding which achievements
Health care and tech innovation go hand in hand. From delivering steady streams of medication to speeding up treatment of diseases, technology is now at the center of patient care. These eight companies are advancing the industry.
Anumana
For detecting diseases earlier
Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death in the U.S. and across the globe. Anumana is tackling this by enhancing the utility of the e
The biggest challenge for the global food system is climate change—and growing food is itself a major source of emissions. But innovations in technology are helping farmers adapt to extreme weather by growing crops that are more likely to survive droughts, heat, or floods. Other solutions, like seaweed for cows, can help radically cut the carbon footprint of producing food.
CH4 Global
For making it easier to grow seaweed to fight cow burps
In a year,
It may have been a rocky year of ups and downs for fintechs and the blockchain as the American economy continues to give off strange vibes. But through it all, there’s been no shortage of innovation in the space, as companies from Bitcoin miners to auction makers forged ahead with new ideas and inventions. Here are some of the best.
AlphaSense
For making market intelligence even smarter
AlphaSense is a
The venture-funded business landscape is rife with far more failures than, well, literally anything else. Those few companies that survive—regardless of the industry—often possess an alchemical mixture of talent, drive, and no small dose of luck that foster the rarest of climates: durable innovation. Here are four businesses that not only have lasted, but they are still delivering boundary-pushing products with as much gusto as ever.
AiDash
For using AI to
To be blunt, construction projects are a pain. Ongoing labor shortages, cash flow issues, poor communication, and a strained supply chain are all weighing on the industry and can set projects back months. There are also the issues of waste and environmental changes due to climate change to address. This year, our honorees are innovating with everything from helping renters build credit scores to reducing water waste.
Epic Cleantec
For recycling onsite waste
Technological innovation doesn’t only happen at the latest startups. These companies have been in business for at least 15 years but are still using cutting-edge technology to deliver results for their customers and business partners. In fields from entertainment technology to government contracting and logistics, their innovations are offering customers new, faster, and more reliable options to get things done.
Arkadium
For giving video game makers a
Equipment has always needed maintenance. We’ve been booking travel online for years. Even using speech recognition to create on-screen captions is not exactly a breakthrough new technology. But all of these established activities have room for improvement, and these companies—each with between 500 and 999 employees—show how it’s done.
Aquant
For keeping complex equipment maintained
For essential equipment such as medical devices and power generators,
People within organizations charged with harnessing innovation have always had to consider a technology’s practicality, maturity, and ROI. And today, as AI and computing power smash through assumptions about the limitations of technology, the same executives must increasingly consider implications that include regulations, ethics, social responsibility, sustainability, and societal impact. These technologists brought that kind of thinking to their work in 2024.
Andy Parsons
Among the 130-plus honorees in Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech for 2024, four organizations stood out for the ingenuity and potential impact of their innovations. They’re making warehouses safer, creating open-source technology for farming in the age of global warming, improving the capabilities of our phones and laptops, and deploying wireless connectivity in areas that have long been underserved.
ArcBest
For helping robots and humans safely