Thousands of businesses are formed in the U.S. every month, based on estimates by the Census Bureau, but not every business that opens survives. The most successful businesses capture trends and stay ahead of them, adapting to changing economic environments and consumer demands. To visualize the U.S. companies that are standing the test of time—and are leading their industries into the future, TIME and Statista are launching the inaugural ranking of America’s Growth Leaders. This list rounds up the top performing publicly listed companies in the U.S., characterized by revenue growth as well as financial security.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America’s Growth Leaders of 2025
To supply the AI boom that has driven markets in the last few years, the demand for chips and computing infrastructure has dramatically increased, and California-based hardware tech company Nvidia (no. 1), which had already been making specialized chips for gaming called GPUs, was able to repurpose those chips for AI and create a market that didn’t yet exist, allowing it to reap significant profits from innovative, industry-defining deals. In an August 2025 financial report, the company said that its revenues were up 56% compared to a year ago, at $46.7 billion. Although it still made around $4.3 billion from its gaming division, the majority of its current revenue comes from its data centers business, which includes the sales of its GPU chips, servers, supercomputers, software tools, and other AI cloud infrastructure. “The strong year-on-year and sequential growth was driven by demand for our accelerated computing platform used for large language models, recommendation engines, and generative and agentic AI applications,” Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress wrote. As a sign of its leadership in the space, it’s also been investing in experimental projects like data centers in space.
Elsewhere, as consumers began paying more attention to fitness, health and wellness, Florida-based Celsius (no. 4) is one of the fastest growing new energy drinks in the market, capitalized off the movement to offer a cleaner caffeinated beverage alternative. “The shift to zero sugar, functional energy drinks is fueling one of the fastest-growing segments in Beverage, and Celsius Holdings is defining it,” CEO John Fieldly said in a Q2 2025 earnings call. Its expanding partnership with distributor PepsiCo (similar to the deal between Monster and Coca-Cola), and its sponsorships of festivals, sporting events, and athletes is also helping establish its presence among consumers. “Recent industry reports pointed to double-digit category growth in 2025, with momentum coming from new-to-category consumers, namely females, Gen Z and the growing number of consumers who are switching to functional energy drinks from other energy sources like [ready-to-drink] cold coffee.”
As world leaders grapple with the looming climate crisis, and make shifts towards sustainability, California-based Tesla (no. 10) saw hikes in revenue from $31.5 billion in 2020 to $96.7 billion 2023 as one of the bigger winners of the U.S. government’s clean energy incentives. It ended fiscal year 2024 at $97.6 billion in revenue. According to E&E News, compliance credits were responsible for Tesla’s first profitable year in 2020. In Q3 2025, the company’s revenues rebounded after dipping in the first half, with CEO Elon Musk saying on the October earnings call that Tesla’s “updated mission” will extend beyond sustainable energy with greater focus on AI, robots and robotaxis, despite its June robotaxi launch in Austin getting off to a rough start. “We operate in a cyclical industry that is sensitive to shifting consumer trends, political and regulatory uncertainty, including with respect to trade and the environment, all of which can be compounded by inflationary pressures, rising energy prices, interest rate fluctuations and the liquidity of enterprise customers,” Tesla’s 10-K filing December stated. “The long-term success of this business is dependent upon incremental volume growth. We continue to increase the production and capabilities of our energy storage products to meet high levels of demand, including the introduction of Powerwall 3 in 2024, and the ramps of our Megafactories in Shanghai and Lathrop, California.”
Missouri-based Build-A-Bear Workshop (no. 15) is a surprising sleeper stock, outperforming companies like Palantir, Visa, and Costco in terms of stock growth, according to analysis by Seeking Alpha. In a presentation to investors in August, the company said that fiscal year 2024 was their most profitable year to date, and their fourth consecutive year of record growth. Build-A-Bear has maintained popularity by tapping into current trends as well as nostalgia and expanding its audience to teens and adults (now making up 40% of sales) through its occasion-based and seasonal releases, as well as its ever-expanding roster of collaborations which include Swarovski, Paddington, RuPaul, Ted Lasso, Dungeons and Dragons, and KFC— not to mention its 18-plus After Dark collection, part of Build-A-Bear “Bear Cave,” the age-gated adult section on their website. It’s also worked to expand its footprint beyond malls.