Fast Company has unveiled its annual The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025, highlighting standout organisations across 58 industries – from advertising to video.

Each company is selected through a rigorous, months-long evaluation process based on four main criteria: innovation, impact, timeliness, and relevance. Editors and writers assess whether a company has introduced a clear innovation – such as a new product, service, business model, or strategic move – that sets it apart from competitors and reflects broader industry trends. They also look at the measurable impact of that innovation, using data like revenue growth, user adoption, or cultural influence. To qualify, the innovation must have occurred or evolved meaningfully in the past 12 months. Finally, companies must show how their innovation connects to current events or pressing challenges in their sector or society. Only those that meet these high standards earn a spot on the prestigious list.

Our list of the Most Innovative Companies offers both a comprehensive look at innovation today and a playbook for the future. This year, we recognize companies that are harnessing AI in deep and meaningful ways, brands that are turning customers into superfans by overdelivering for them, and challengers that are introducing bold ideas and vital competition to their industries. At a time when the world is rapidly shifting, these companies are charting the way forward.

Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan

Domain Names and Naming Highlights

Based on our analysis of the companies featured in Fast Company’s 2025 World’s Most Innovative Companies, we’ve identified several key trends in naming and domain name usage. 

Domain Names

Out of the 50 companies on Fast Company’s 2025 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, 45 use .com domain names. The .com extension has dominated the internet for decades and remains the most memorable and widely recognised by users worldwide.

36 companies use Exact Brand Match (EBM) domain names. An EBM domain name is key to making a business easy to find online, as it exactly matches what customers usually type when searching for the brand.

2 companies on the list use a dash in their domain names. However, hyphens are generally discouraged, as they make domains harder to remember and easier to mistype. Users often skip the dash, which can lead to confusion and make the site more difficult to locate.

Naming Trends 

Dictionary Words as Brand Names

Using dictionary words as brand names remains a strong trend. These names are globally recognisable, easy to remember, and versatile for branding.

Examples: Notion, Huntress, Alloy, Wonder, Life Time, Zero Foodprint, Unstructured, Zinc, Glean.

Short Names

Short names are easy to remember, quick to search, and simple to type.

Examples: Frida, Cava, On, FX, Tubi, Zinc, BYD.

Creative Wordplay and Invented Names

Inventive, playful names often blending words, sounds or cultural references help brands stand out in crowded markets.

Examples: Figma, Liquid Death, NVIDIA (A blend of invidia, Latin for “envy” and NV, short for “next vision”), SharkNinja, Duolingo (deriving from the Latin words “duo” which means “two” and “lingua”, meaning “tongue” or “language”), HistoSonics (a combination of histo meaning “tissue” and sonics, meaning “sound waves”), Waymo (stands for a new way forward in mobility), Chainalysis (merges “chain” (from blockchain) and “analysis”).

Personal Names as Brand Names

Using personal names creates a sense of familiarity and adds a human touch, helping brands feel more approachable and relatable.

Examples: Robinhood, Frida, Simbe, Glean, Cava.

Namepicks

Waymo

No. 1 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025

Waymo is a self-driving technology company that started in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. It later became an independent company under Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The name Waymo is derived from “a new way forward in mobility”.

The core of what Waymo does is build technology that allows cars to drive themselves – no human driver needed.

Before a Waymo vehicle begins operating in a new area, it first maps the roads in incredible detail, capturing everything from traffic lights and lane markers to curbs, crosswalks, and temporary construction zones. These custom-built maps go far beyond standard GPS, allowing the vehicle to know exactly where it is at all times, even in areas with poor signal.

On the road, the Waymo Driver uses lidar, cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors to detect everything around the car in 360 degrees. This real-time data is processed by AI, which monitors road activity, understands the behavior of other road users, and predicts what they might do next.

The system then plans the safest route, adjusting speed, steering, and positioning as needed. With over 20 million miles of real-world driving and 20 billion miles in simulation, the Waymo Driver keeps learning and improving.

Waymo also operates a robotaxi service called Waymo One, available in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The company’s big goal is to make transportation safer and more accessible. Since most car accidents are caused by human error, Waymo believes that self-driving cars could help save lives. It could also give more independence to people who can’t drive, like seniors or people with disabilities.

Our mission: Be the world’s most trusted driver. Every year, 1.4M lives are lost to traffic crashes around the world. The status quo is not acceptable. Waymo is committed to holding safety to a higher standard. Because when we do, we make space for people to get around in a whole new way. On this path, we aim to offer freedom of movement for all, create a sustainable, efficient transportation ecosystem, and make the planet better than we found it.

Waymo

Waymo ensures global accessibility with its website, which can be found at the Exact Brand Match (EBM) domain name Waymo.com. 

Google LLC owns an impressive portfolio of over 380,000 domain names, covering everything from different extensions and common misspellings to domains for its wide range of products and sub-brands. This strategy helps Google maintain a strong online presence, makes its brands easy to access, protects against misuse, and ensures users always land on the official websites.

Glean

No. 6 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025

Glean was founded by a team of former Google search engineers and industry veterans who set out to solve a common workplace frustration: the difficulty of finding answers at work. Glean’s Work AI platform helps employees around the world find information, generate content, and automate tasks using AI. By connecting and understanding all of a company’s enterprise data, Glean delivers trusted, context-aware answers through its AI assistant. 

Built on powerful search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology, Glean generates personalised, referenceable responses grounded in each company’s unique knowledge graph – while keeping everything secure, private, and permission-aware. The platform also allows users to build multi-step prompts, generative AI apps, and task-specific agents to streamline daily workflows.

AI agents are set to redefine how we work, and we’re proud to be at the forefront of this transformation. The latest recognition by Fast Company underscores the trust our customers place in us and the unique impact Glean is making by bringing practical, powerful agents to every corner of the enterprise.

Arvind Jain, Founder & CEO, Glean

Glean uses the domain name Glean.com, a short, memorable dictionary word that strengthens its global brand and ensures easy recognition.

Duolingo

No. 10 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025

Duolingo is one of the world’s most popular language-learning platforms, known for its engaging, gamified approach to education. Founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, Duolingo offers users a fun, interactive way to learn new languages through bite-sized lessons that feel more like playing a game than traditional studying. The platform covers over 40 languages, including widely spoken ones like Spanish, French, and German, as well as less common options like Welsh, Hawaiian, and even fictional languages such as Klingon.

Duolingo stands out by making language learning accessible to everyone, offering a free version alongside its premium subscription, Super Duolingo. Its app design encourages daily learning through features like streaks, rewards, and competitive leaderboards. This gamified experience has fueled its global popularity, attracting millions of users. Duolingo also uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to personalise lessons, track progress, and offer real-time feedback.

In addition to language courses, Duolingo has expanded into other educational areas, including Duolingo ABC for early literacy, the Duolingo English Test (DET) as an affordable language proficiency exam, and Duolingo Math, which brings its interactive learning model to math education.

We created Duolingo in 2011 with a mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. I’ve always felt that economic inequality is one of the biggest problems facing humanity, and education is the best way to help most people around the world improve their lives. Our vision is to create a world where more money can’t buy you a better education.

Luis von Ahn, Co-founder

Duolingo, derived from the Latin words “duo” (two) and “lingua” (language), reflects the platform’s multilingual focus. The company owns its Exact Brand Match domain name, Duolingo.com, ensuring strong brand recognition, consistency, and ease of access in the global market.

Anysphere / Cursor

No. 26 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025

Anysphere was co-founded in 2022 by Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger while they were students at MIT. Anysphere is the company behind Cursor, an AI-native code editor designed to make software development faster and more intuitive. 

Cursor simplifies development and boosts productivity with advanced autocompletion and predictive coding features, including multi-line edits, smart rewrites, and cursor prediction. Developers can chat directly with an AI that sees their entire codebase – asking questions, getting explanations, and receiving context-aware suggestions to write, refactor, or debug code more efficiently.

Something beautiful is happening to code. It can be difficult to discern amidst a flurry of demos, headlines, and waitlists, but AI is changing coding, and it’s changing it today. Little by little, the molasses that characterizes building and changing software is being replaced by lightness and control. Our aim with Cursor is to continue to lead this shift, by building a magical tool that will one day write all the world’s software.

Cursor

Anysphere operates under the domain name Anysphere.inc, while for its flagship product, the company secured the strategic-grade domain name Cursor.com. As a short, dictionary-word .com, it’s intuitive, globally recognisable, and easy to remember, making it a powerful asset for driving organic traffic and reinforcing brand authority.

Frida

No. 48 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025

Frida is a modern parenthood brand known for offering smart, honest, and practical solutions for everyday challenges that come with having a baby. The brand is behind best-selling products like the Frida Baby SnotSucker, postpartum recovery kits, and a wide range of items designed to support both parents and babies from day one.

Frida was founded by Chelsea Hirschhorn, a mother of four who saw a major gap in the market for real, straightforward products that meet new parents’ needs. Her vision was to create a brand that speaks honestly about the realities of parenthood, offering tools that are simple, effective, and thoughtfully designed.

Now, Frida is supporting families even earlier in their journey with the launch of Frida Fertility, a line of products created to help couples trying to conceive. This collection is designed to bring comfort, clarity, and control to what can be a stressful and uncertain experience.

One of the key products in the line is an at-home insemination kit, which includes soft applicators and a reusable semen deposit cup – offering an affordable and private way to try at home. The fertility range also features pre-conception supplements for both egg and sperm health, ovulation and pregnancy tests, conception-friendly lubricant, and a collapsible, reusable urine-sample cup that makes testing cleaner and more convenient.

Frida Fertility was developed with input from fertility specialists to make the path to parenthood feel more informed and supported, removing some of the guesswork and stress along the way. 

In a world of outdated parenting products, Frida’s purpose and mission has been to prepare parents for the ‘unfiltered’ realities of parenthood. With no book to prepare parents for what’s to come, Frida is all about creating simple, efficient solutions-based products that make it easier for parents to navigate these raw realities. We wanted to take the guesswork out of the preparation process for women!

Chelsea Hirschhorn, CEO of Frida, in an interview for Epicurean Life

Frida is a personal name meaning “peace.” Using a personal name as a brand name helps create a sense of familiarity, warmth, and trust. It adds character and authenticity, making the brand feel more relatable and emotionally connected to its audience. Operating on the EBM domain name, Frida.com enhances the brand’s credibility, accessibility, and global appeal.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

The right domain name is an important consideration when it comes to building and protecting your brand. If you’re ready to take the next step and invest in a perfect domain name for your business, contact us to learn more about our available options and how we can help you get started.

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