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TIME and Statista launch the World's Most Impactful Companies 2026, powered by Upright data
The 2026 edition of TIME's World's Most Impactful Companies list, published in partnership with Statista, is live – with Upright's net impact data.
Published May 12, 2026
The ranking identifies 500 companies with at least $250 million in annual revenue that create measurable net positive impact through their core business. Moderna takes the #1 spot for its mRNA work.
The methodology weighs each company's alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals by Upright's science-based net impact model, which draws on AI-enabled analysis of 300M+ scientific articles and public statistical databases from the World Bank, WHO, OECD, and IPCC. The result is an assessment of real-world impact that is independent of company self-reporting.
In the accompanying TIME interview, Upright founder and CEO Annu Nieminen explained why this kind of data is increasingly material to financial analysis:
Before [impacts] show up on your financial analysis, they show up in scientific analysis like this. Typically, if it's going to have a material impact on human health or biodiversity, there's going to be a financial implication sooner or later. This is the relevance for this kind of data that wasn't necessarily understood five years ago.
She also pointed out the structural gap in traditional sustainability rankings: ESG reports are largely about how companies do what they do, not what they actually get done. Companies with net-negative core operations – tobacco, fast food, fast fashion – can still rank well if their reporting is diligent. That's precisely the gap the new ranking is designed to expose.
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