THE WORLD'S MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES

BIG TECH COMPANIES in the U.S. were once disrupters at the edges of the global economy; now they're the engines at its center. The 26th edition of the Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies All-Stars list shows how much esteem those titans command. For the 17th straight year, Apple finished first in our annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a poll of some 3,700 executives, directors, and analysts; Amazon and Microsoft rounded out the top three. Nvidia, whose GPU chips are powering the world’s forays into generative Al, soared to its best-ever ranking at No. 10. Meanwhile, two Europe-based giants showed their staying power, as German automaker BMW No. 28) and Ireland-domiciled consultancy Accenture No. 33) earned slots as All-Stars for the 22nd and 14th consecutive year, respectively. FOR MORE DETAILED RANKINGS, VISIT FORTUNE.COM.)

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INDUSTRY STANDOUTS

AS RANKED BY THEIR PEERS

WHERE RIVALS SHOW RESPECT

OVER THE PAST YEAR, as chipmaker Nvidia vaulted into the top ranks of tech companies, its rise took some business leaders by surprise. Followers of the Fortune World's Most Admired Companies list might have seen the leap coming seven years ago.

It was in 2017, after all, that Nvidia knocked Intel from its perch as Fortune's most admired semiconductor company. Back then, Intel was about 10 times Nvidia's size by revenue, riding high on its dominance in chips for PCs and laptops, and the change felt like a mouse-beats-cat moment. But Nvidia held on to the top spot for six of the next seven years in 2023, generative AI turned the company into a trillion-dollar-market-cap monster.

The Nvidia story says something about the predictive power of Fortune's industry rankings. The Most Admired Companies list is really two lists (see our methodology on the right). There's the All-Stars list, which ranks companies by the acclaim they win from the wider business community. The industry rankings, meanwhile, ask insiders about their own companies and, more important, about their immediate rivals, prompting respondents to score companies on a 1-to-10 scale in nine categories, including quality of management, innovativeness, and ability to attract talent. In short, this is where people in the know get granular about who's good at what, and who's on the rise. (You can find more detailed results online at fortune.com.)

In this year's survey, respondents gave Nvidia credit for being good at almost everything. The company finished in the top 10, among all companies, in seven of our nine categories. Apple did the same: Not coincidentally, Apple claimed the top ranking in the computer industry, for the 14th time in 15 years.