The Wired 40

Our 10th annual list of the most innovative companies in the world.

1 Google | 1

The masters of the universe are busily converting ad dollars into a global network of fiber lines and data centers. A plan etary computer crunching ever- larger mountains of bits is an invention of historic import. Google's power to inspire both awe and fear continues to grow.

2 Apple | 2

Tired: MP3 players. Wired: mobile handsets! And why not? Especially if the Apple crew can stuff most of a Mac into a futuristic gadget straight out of Minority Report. Cell phone + iPod + social networking = marketer's dream.

3 Genentech | 4 up
When you target specific biological mechanisms, your drugs can sidestep the one-disease rut: Avastin has been OK'd for a growing list of cancers. And since 20 new drugs are set to enter the pipeline by 2010, the chances for more multiple hits are good.

4 Samsung | 3 down

Mobile handsets have joined PCs as the focus of some of high tech's most brutal slugfests. Samsung's upmarket strategy protects margins - a tactic it has been using to batter Sony in home theater and camcorders. Too bad about that iPhone.

5 News Corp. | 9 up

Why fly capital-sucking TV satellites when you've got 90 million MySpacers glued to their screens? King Rupert is feeding the greatest frenzy of media populism since the birth of the tabloid press. Now he needs to convert it into broadcast-style revenue.

6 Nintendo new!

Hot graphics? Nah. What's delighting gamers - and blowing the smirk off Sony's face - is the Wii's acrobatic controller. Selling a million consoles a month gives the Pok master a happy challenge: turning a runaway hit into an enduring franchise.

7 Salesforce.com | 15 up

The pioneering purveyor of Web-based business apps keeps swiping small and midsize clients from giant rivals Oracle and SAP. Latest cool tool: a one-stop online marketing platform that ports your campaign directly to Google AdWords.

8 Cisco | 12 up

As the petabits surge, Cisco keeps outflanking cut-rate competitors and surfing the flood of online video. VoIP gear and set-top boxes contribute to '90s-style earnings growth. Now CEO John Chambers hopes to sell the world on wall-size, hi-def telepresence.
9 General Electric | 8 down

Good-bye to the slow-lane plastics division. Hello to avionics, security systems, and medical labs in a box. Edison's heirs keep doubling down on products too big, gnarly, or capital-intensive for companies that haven't been ruling Big Tech for a century.

10 Nvidia | 21 up

Three trillion operations per second make for a killer demo: hyper-real renderings of glamazon Adrianne Curry. But the new GeForce 8800 chip is alsospeedy enough to launch gaming's graphics powerhouse into totally new markets, like gene sequencing.

11 Baidu new!

In China, Google is just another imported also-ran. Baidu, which handles more than 60 percent of the country's searches, is teaming up with recording giant EMI to deliver ad-supported music. On demand: the biggest hits from Hong Kong and Taiwan!

12 Toyota | 7 down

How about a buff Tundra CrewMax truck - with a dashboard nav screen that also displays the view from a tailgate-mounted camera - to tow your groovy Prius? Toyota doesn't confine all that cool tech to little green geekmobiles.

13 SunPower | 17 up

Acquiring installation specialist PowerLight gives SunPower total command of the solar food chain, from R&D to rooftop. The plan is to shear overall system costs in half, enough to let sunshine compete head-on with cheap coal-fired grid power.

14 Infosys | 11 down

So much for cut-rate coding. The rajas of outsourcing are taking on R&D and computer-aided engineering. But the work is still massively human-intensive, which means battling upstart rivals to hire more than 500 new Infoscions a week.

15 Medtronic | 16 up

A chest implant that transmits vital signs to the Web for your cardiologist to view - the boomer iPhone! Medtronic's $25,000 pacemaker-like device is just the start. Look for similar innovations that treat epilepsy, obesity, and depression.

16 Level 3 new!

Wiring the planet with fiber optics really was a great idea - it just took a while for YouTube and friends to come up with the petabits to make it pay. Level 3 boasts 50,000 miles of prime Net backbone. Now it can start working off that $6 billion in debt.

17 Exelon | 33 up

Emission caps? Carbon taxes? No worries when two-thirds of the 25,000 megawatts you produce are atom-powered. Exelon is aiming to build the first new US reactor in a generation. Now, if Uncle Sam would kindly figure out where to stash spent nuclear fuel.

18 Netflix | 14 down

CEO Reed Hastings is either a stone-cold visionary or the Hamlet of online media. After three years of indecision, Netflix is finally serving (B-list) movies online to select subscribers. Upgrade price tag: $40 million, most of last year's DVD-by-mail profit.

19 Verizon | 22 up

Leading the telco charge against cable, Verizon's 50-Mbps fiber-to-the-home service is almost twice as fast as its last rollout. Woo-hoo! Now competition has to bring stratospheric prices - upwards of $90 a month - down to earth.

20 Electronic Arts | 13 down

The King Kong of interactive games needs big hits to justify its Hollywood-size overhead and keep itself in bananas. Speed, sports, and shooter franchises all continue to pull their weight - but just barely. Spore needs to soar.

21 Monsanto | 25 up

Frankencorn engineered for ethanol production is so 2006. Bring on the trans-fat-free soybeans! After years of fighting cultural headwinds, Monsanto is finally figuring out how to go with the flow. Climate-change special: drought-tolerant corn.

22 Garmin new!

GPS technology has infiltrated cockpits, dashboards, and handhelds. Now industry leader Garmin is making the crucial leap into networked smartphones, laptops, and PTAs - that's personal travel assistants. Let 10,000 localized services bloom.

23 Amazon.com | 6 down

Trying to be all stores to all shoppers, Amazon has to compete on a thousand fronts. Now CEO Jeff Bezos is bravely trying to mine value from the back end by offering to handle everything from computing to ecommerce for other businesses.

24 NTT DoCoMo new!

Fat and happy, Japan's wireless Godzilla keeps ramping up its technology while the rest of the mobile world battles with debt. A hundred megabits a second? Coming right up. Linux for mobile? Domo arigato. Not everything big telcos do is evil.

25 EMC | 26 up

Disney Studios' post-Pixar remodel includes two EMC CX3-80 storage networks - just the thing for stashing 1 billion 3-D textures. For the king of data warehousing, though, today's big opportunity is selling digital closet space for online video.

26 Intercontinental Exchange new!

Once a back-room specialty, energy trading is now center stage. As the leading futures exchange for fossil fuels, electric power, and even emissions, the ICE is hot. Check its 2006 stock chart - up 300 percent - and weep.

27 Comcast | 39 up

Someday, bitstreams will be metered like water and electricity. Until then, Comcast's fiesta of digital cable, VOD, DVR, and "triple play" connectivity rules. The challenge: fending off party-crashing telcos, satellite broadcasters, and online insurgents.

28 BP | 31 up

Oil spills and exploding refineries provide more incentive than ever for the number three oil company to move "beyond petroleum." The recent $500 million investment in an alt-energy institute is a high profile step in that direction - and less than a week's profit.

29 Disney new!

It's the wedding of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Rev. Steve Jobs presiding. Disney boldly took the iTunes plunge. Now John Lasseter is sprinkling Pixar dust over its studios and theme parks. Can CEO Bob Iger devise a digital makeover for the rest of Mouse house?

30 Yahoo | 5 down

Five hundred million users can't be that wrong. Sure, Yahoo got stomped by the most spectacular upstart in business history. But big-brand advertisers, fearing Google uber alles, are pulling for Yahoo's new Panama ad platform.

31 Boeing new!

Burt Rutan isn't the only engineering visionary building edgy new planes. Fast, fuel-efficient, and rivet-free, Boeing's carbon-fiber 787 Dreamliner will be the first truly 21st-century sky ride when it hits the runway next year. Sorry, Airbus.

32 eBay | 19 down

The perfect Internet business model generates outsize expectations - which means mistakes cost double. Wall Street slammed eBay for bungling in China and pissing off power sellers. Good thing PayPal and Skype are finally starting to earn their keep.

33 Flextronics | 23 down

The Santa's workshop of globalization designs, builds, and ships everything from cell phones to printers - and now Lego blocks. Its hyperefficient supply chain fuels a Cambrian explosion of converging devices. And you gotta love what it does for prices.

34 Corningnew!

In high tech, glass used to mean fiber optics. Today, screens are the hot commodity, and Corning supplies LCD substrate to manufacturers like Samsung and Sharp. As prices for flat screens fall and volume soars, the glassmaster profits.

35 Gen-Probe | 35

Gen-Probe's nucleic-acid tests screen more than 80 percent of the US blood supply, flagging HIV-1, hepatitis C, and West Nile. Assays for prostate cancer are already approved in Europe. Top priority: rapid detection of E. coli and other food-borne pathogens.

36 TSMC | 30 down

Astrophysicists are over the moon about the new Sing 512-core CPU, destined to simulate the cosmos in a next-gen supercomputer. Who etched its delicate traces? TSMC. The fab-for-hire does the clean-room dirty work so chip wizards can focus on design.

37 Lenovo | 29 down

Talk about global - the world's number-three PC maker rotates its headquarters between Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Lenovo is leveraging low-cost Chinese R&D into cool features like laptops secured by facial recognition.

38 IBM | 18 down

Its engineering ranks have been decimated by the shift to lucrative IT services, but Big Blue can still punch like a heavyweight. Proof: Linux server code, chips powering all three top game consoles, and social networking software for the suit set.

39 Intel | 24 down

The empire strikes back. AMD's ambush of the PC processor market precipitated a hail of new Intel marvels, like a supercomputer on a chip that uses less power than a lightbulb. Now Apple and Sun have Intel inside. Don't mess with smart, wealthy paranoids.

40 Microsoft | 36 down

Wanted: second career for rich, fat, nervous ex-monopolist. Desktop software is vanishing into the cloud, and as balance-sheet replacements, Xbox and Zune don't pass the laugh test. Luckily, $31 billion in rainy-day money buys time and options. (But not Google.)
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