The world’s biggest businesses are about to get shaken up. Some are spending billions to stay on top
The business landscape is changing rapidly. We are witnessing a geopolitical reordering brought on by multiple wars and tariff uncertainty. AI is transforming every industry, and executives who don’t make bold, fast moves will quickly see themselves and their companies become irrelevant.
Top tech investor Vinod Khosla recently stated that we are witnessing an unprecedented era of disruption—one that could take down a significant number of the world’s largest companies. “One of my predictions is, the 2030s will see a faster rate of demise of Fortune 500 companies than we’ve ever seen,” Khosla said.
This publication has tracked the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500—the world’s largest companies by revenue—for decades. This year’s list doesn’t fully reflect the disruptive forces Khosla is referencing, since it’s based primarily on companies’ 2024 performance, but we may look back on this moment as the calm before the storm.
Considering the moves that Global 500 companies have already made in 2025, it’s clear the AI era has arrived. Microsoft, for example—No. 22 on the list—has slashed roughly 4% of its global workforce. Its CEO, Satya Nadella, says AI now writes up to 30% of the company’s code.
AI is transforming every industry—and we may look back on this moment as the calm before the storm.
Few leaders are making bolder moves than Mark Zuckerberg to meet the moment. Meta Platforms (No. 41), which laid off 3,600 employees at the start of the year, has been putting billions behind efforts to become a dominant player in AI. After its homegrown Llama large language models missed benchmarks and disappointed many users, Zuckerberg began recruiting some of the world’s top AI researchers away from Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google—with compensation packages that rival the most extravagant CEO paydays.
Some of Zuckerberg’s hires have been offered salary packages worth hundreds of millions. But the biggest payout of all is the $14.3 billion Meta spent to acquire half of Scale AI and scoop up its cofounder, 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, who is now Meta’s first-ever chief AI officer. Fortune’s Sharon Goldman dug into Wang’s remit to build superintelligence at Meta with his rock-star team of AI minds; learn more in our story “Alexandr Wang is now leading Meta’s AI dream team. Will Mark Zuckerberg’s big bet pay off?“
Zuckerberg’s gumption has also earned him the No. 3 spot on Fortune’s annual 100 Most Powerful People in Business ranking. In this edition, our second, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang knocks fellow tech mogul Elon Musk off last year’s perch as No. 1. Musk (now No. 4) is scrambling to rehab Tesla after a reputationally bruising experience running DOGE for President Trump. Musk is also coping with the rise of international electric vehicle rivals that are eating Tesla’s lunch. The fiercest of those foes, BYD, originated in China—whose huge EV market it now dominates—and is building a massive new factory in Hungary to help it sell its relatively cheap cars throughout Europe. Fortune’s Vivienne Walt goes inside BYD’s expansion efforts in “BYD is already beating Tesla. Its new Europe playbook shows why it’s poised to dominate the EV race.“
As Musk’s journey shows, it’s hard to reach the top in business, and it’s even harder to stay there. But we hope Fortune can help you do both.
This article appears in the August/September 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “Move fast and remake things.”Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in America. Explore this year's list.
