15 companies that will change the world

These game-changing startups are likely to upend existing industries - and spawn new entrepreneurial opportunities.

Bloom Energy
Bloom Energy
CEO: K.R. Sridhar
Disruption: Energy generators in homes and businesses
Disrupted: Electric utilities

The company's vision is to use solid-oxide fuel cells to allow homes to generate their own electricity. The fuel cells would use (but not burn) hydrocarbon fuel, and produce just half the carbon dioxide that today's power plants do. One fuel cell should be enough to serve a home; homes could sell excess power back to the grid. Bloom Energy's biggest hurdle is cost. It needs to get the price of its machines below $10,000 apiece.

Blinkx

Raydiance

Expensr

Zipcar

MFG.com

Virgin Charter

PatientsLikeMe

Bloom Energy

Vanu

Zink

A123 Systems

Renewable Energy Group

Desktop Factory

Cree

One laptop per child
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.