"Falling behind on AI" is the phrase TIME used to explain Apple's absence from its World's Best Companies list last year. This year Apple is back at third, with a score of 93.16 behind Nvidia's 97.51 and Cigna's 94.37, on the 1,000-company ranking TIME publishes with Statista.
The ranking averages three things equally: employee satisfaction, revenue growth over three years, and sustainability transparency. Apple's return is a revenue story. TIME cites a decline from 2022 to 2024 for last year's drop and July's 10 percent year-over-year growth, the largest since 2021, for the comeback, alongside a line from Tim Cook about growing the company's AI investment across its devices. Employee satisfaction lands Apple third behind Microsoft and IBM. Growth gets a Very High, which 9to5Mac calls TIME's top rating and isn't: TIME's table has a tier above it, Outstanding, and Nvidia, Cigna, Meta, and Microsoft all sit in it.
TIME's top ten, with the growth tier that decides so much of the score:
| Rank | Company | Score | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nvidia | 97.51 | Outstanding |
| 2 | Cigna | 94.37 | Outstanding |
| 3 | Apple | 93.16 | Very High |
| 4 | Meta Platforms | 91.80 | Outstanding |
| 5 | AstraZeneca | 90.64 | Outstanding |
| 6 | Microsoft | 90.50 | Outstanding |
| 7 | Deutsche Telekom | 90.49 | Very High |
| 8 | Accenture | 90.30 | High |
| 9 | McKesson | 90.26 | Outstanding |
| 10 | AMD | 90.08 | Outstanding |
The number that moved most points the other way. Apple topped sustainability transparency in 2024; this year it sits 24th. TIME's own introduction frames the list around the AI supply chain, with Nvidia supplier Wistron at 16th and Lenovo entering on server demand.
That's the line worth watching, since the other two factors track the iPhone cycle more than the company. With Meta, Microsoft, and AMD alongside Nvidia, the top ten reads like a list of who sells or buys AI hardware, with a health insurer at second and a drugmaker at fifth as the exceptions. Apple's place on it rests on a revenue bounce and an assistant that, as of this week's keynote, still arrives with usage limits attached. Siri, again, only this time it's the reason a magazine gave for leaving Apple off, and then for putting it back.
