During a year when many companies retreated from DEI initiatives—or, at the very least, stopped touting them—others held firm. Proving that the “responsibility” aspect of corporate social responsibility is a strategic choice, the most innovative companies find ways to extend the impact of their core businesses—or tread into new waters.

Consider what Babylist did in the wake of natural disasters that upended the lives of families or the threat of tariffs that might worsen an affordability crisis: The baby registry platform rallied its brand partners and leveraged its influence to be a force for good. Becoming an advocate can be intimidating at any time, but particularly amid so much divisiveness. When public lands came under threat, onX leveraged its expertise in mapping to pinpoint every single parcel of public land at risk for disposal, which engaged recreationists on both sides of the aisle—ultimately resulting in a massive (and successful) outreach effort. And Microsoft is showing how AI can be a force for good with the development of AI-powered tools to monitor global biodiversity and endangered species.

The past year also saw companies reimagine some innovative uses for the devices that we can’t seem to live without. With the SightConnect app, Infosys has drawn upon its logistics and technological expertise to transform smartphones into professional-grade screening tools to address preventable vision loss—while modernizing the cornea donation and harvesting process. And with the introduction of the Ocean Mode camera feature, Samsung Electronics is likewise transforming Galaxy smartphones into a powerful scientific tool—in its case for coral reef monitoring and restoration.

Meanwhile, far from abandoning ambitious sustainability goals that come due in a few years, some companies are doubling down and even accelerating progress. Lego Group continues to find new and innovative ways to manufacture its Lego bricks more sustainably and Ikea is proving that, from sourcing to delivery and assembly, incremental changes can add up in powerful ways. And Cirrus Logic continues to push boundaries in its development of semiconductor chips while tracking ahead of its sustainability goals, illustrating there doesn’t have to be an environmental cost to innovation.

Even if changing the world is an admirable goal, two companies demonstrated that a tangible impact at the community level can be just as valuable. Sharebite is experimenting with new ways to ensure that employee meal perks also nourish people in need, as meal donations have exceeded 17 million, while Alpha Structural stepped up for its Los Angeles-area community in the wake of disaster—offering both peace of mind and tangible solutions to chart a path forward.

1. Babylist

For thinking beyond the registry to support families in need

Since it was founded in 2011, parenting info website Babylist has focused on caring for growing families,. But in 2025, it reimagined that mission. Acting quickly after wildfires tore through the Los Angeles area, the company rallied 160 brand partners in a couple weeks to donate $2.3 million of essentials for more than 1,000 displaced families. This sparked the formation of a comprehensive crisis support program to support families facing disasters, economic hardship, or who are underserved. Subsequent efforts included collecting $25,000 in products for NICU families and $35,000 for those affected by Texas floods.

Babylist has also taken its first steps into leveraging its influence to be a force for good. Faced with the threat of rising costs, it united more than two dozen baby brands to advocate for relief. The company’s new “Open to Secondhand” feature also add a ways the company can help parents outside of disasters: it reimagines the baby registry with pre-loved items; in just six months, parents-to-be marked more than 600,000 registry items, including strollers and bassinets, as acceptable to receive used rather than new.

2. onX

For mobilizing outdoor enthusiasts to be advocates for access to public lands

When the U.S. faced its largest threat to public lands in decades due to Trump administration plans to sell vast areas controlled by the federal government, onX—a mapping app for hunters, hikers, and off-roaders—leveraged its proprietary mapping platform to transform 33 pages of dense legislative text into an interactive map that pinpointed every single parcel of land at risk for disposal.

Thanks to a social campaign built around the message of “I know a spot on public land” that reached 15 million people with information about how to contact members of Congress, public land lovers came out in droves. The result was one of the largest outreach efforts in history focused on public lands—an effort that ultimately saw lawmakers abandon provisions to sell off public lands.

onX also flexed its influence to close a gap it identified through research: Of the 92% of Americans who recreate on public lands, a scant 19% participate in stewardship activities each year. Partnering with Toyota, the company created a series of trail revival projects across 12 states in 2025. Nearly 500 volunteers dedicated 3,000 hours to restore more than 260 miles of trails and clean up more than 13,000 pounds of trash. Such efforts show that blending digital advocacy with on-the-ground engagement can mobilize a fragmented outdoor community to protect and restore public lands.

3. Infosys

For powering a digital cornea bank and addressing the blindness crisis in rural India

Infosys has set out to solve a problem that’s a logistics crisis in disguise as much as it is a health crisis: Helping tens of millions of people in rural India who live with preventable vision loss. Drawing on its expertise in technology services, the the global consulting firm partnered with the LV Prasad Eye Institute in 2024 to launch the SightConnect app, which transforms smartphones into professional-grade screening tools, bringing specialized eye care to India’s most underserved rural regions.

SightConnect was used to triage 121,000 patients in a 12-month period, achieving an 83% accuracy rate for AI-powered condition detection on a subset of 1,200 patients. This type of clinical-grade reliability makes SightConnect a viable option to help people globally who live with vision impairment. 

What’s more, Infosys is helping to modernize the entire chain of custody for vision restoration. By integrating the cornea donation pledging process and eye-bank workflows into the same app used for screening, SightConnect effectively closes the loop from initial awareness to final transplant—a process that saw more than 2,300 harvested in one month alone. Thanks to its open-source model and preventative approach, the innovation of SightConnect could be adapted to address other healthcare inequities worldwide.

4. Lego Group

For using geothermal energy to make an iconic toy more sustainable.

The classic Lego brick of today may not look so different from the ones you played with as a kid, but the Danish company has been playing around with more than 600 materials to achieve a sustainability goal by 2032. Now, more than half of the materials in the resin used to make Lego bricks incorporates renewable or recycled materials—just one of Lego Group’s many ambitious long-term sustainability goals.

The factories where Legos are manufactured have also gotten an overhaul so the company can achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This past year, Lego Group identified an innovative, closed-loop geothermal heating system that will completely eliminate the use of natural gas in its heating systems at a factory in Hungary by 2028. In Vietnam, a new, solar-powered factory was designed as a model for low-carbon manufacturing in the region and is expected to reduce the company’s emissions by about 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. In water-scarce Mexico, a new treatment facility has already slashed freshwater and well-water consumption. 

5. Microsoft

For harnessing AI to monitor global biodiversity

How do we protect and restore habitats and endangered species in some of the most remote regions of the world? Microsoft recognized that equipping researchers with tools to measure the planet’s biodiversity more accurately would inform how to intervene more effectively. Through its AI for Good Lab, in late 2024, Microsoft launched SPARROW, a solar-powered platform to monitor global diversity in real-time. By the end of 2025, SPARROW units were operational on every continent, supporting hundreds of recording devices that have already processed millions of audio and video samples.

Building on this same infrastructure, the AI for Good Lab developed GIRAFFE, a specialized AI tool that identifies individual giraffes with greater than 90% accuracy. Tracking endangered species is still work that’s mostly manual, resource-intensive, and error-prone, but the GIRAFFE technology uses computer vision to identify giraffes based on their spot patterns, allowing researchers to track population health from afar—a model that Microsoft plans to scale for other endangered species. 

This suite of biodiversity tools can process crucial data faster than ever, informing conservationists about the urgent action needed to protect biodiversity. In this way, the technology giant is illustrating that AI is the new frontline for conservation.

6. Ikea

For helping to ensure that cheap furnishings don’t come at an environmental cost

When you assemble a piece of Ikea furniture, you may not think about the little bags containing the screws, bolts, and Allen keys. In 2025, the furniture giant began using paper-based bags, a small change that will reduce annual plastic consumption by approximately 1,400 tons.

From swapping plastic for paper to reforesting 4,000 hectares of Brazilian pastureland, Ikea is overhauling every link in its value chain to meet its 2030 sustainability targets. The efforts range from testing the use of plastic waste in its products, transforming food waste into renewable natural gas and low-carbon fertilizer, and exploring the future of responsible coffee.

In manufacturing, Ikea developed a “soft-roller” paint technology that replaces traditional sprays, cutting drying times from 45 minutes to just 1 minute and saving 20 tons of paint annually. Even delivery is being transformed: In Paris, a Seine River barge program combined with electric vans has reduced carbon dioxide emissions fivefold. Finally, Ikea is bringing sustainability into customer homes with a collection that makes water conservation effortless.

7. Samsung Electronics

For enlisting its smartphone cameras to monitor coral reefs for conservationists

Your smartphone could have a higher calling than just scrolling and texting: it could also be a powerful instrument of conservation. In 2025, Samsung Electronics partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and SeaTrees to develop Ocean Mode, a breakthrough camera feature that transforms Galaxy smartphones into tools to monitor coral reefs facing rapid and catastrophic declines. These ecosystems sustain 25% of marine life, provide food and livelihoods for over a billion people, but are threatened by rising ocean temperatures and acidification.

Monitoring reef health previously required specialized underwater cameras and equipment that was both expensive and cumbersome, but Ocean Mode makes this technology available on an everyday device with 200-megapixel sensors and AI-powered white-balance correction to capture research-grade imagery. One year after launching, Ocean Mode is already making waves: The technology has supported the mapping of eight major reefs and the planting of over 11,000 coral fragments, restoring an area of habitat roughly equivalent to 25 basketball courts.

Ocean Mode is fostering a global community of innovators and local stewards in Indonesia, Fiji, and the U.S., while Samsung plans to scale to other regions. By making an invisible crisis visible, this technology represents a new era for planetary conservation.

8. Sharebite

For turning corporate meals into a program that nourishes the entire community

That slop bowl you enjoy at your desk for lunch, courtesy of your employer, is more than a perk—it’s potentially a powerful way to combat local food insecurity. Sharebite launched in 2018 as a meal benefits program with a one-for-one model of donating one meal for every order placed—and has donated more than 17 million meals and counting to Feeding America and City Harvest. In 2025, the company took its model one step further by putting employees in the driver’s seat. Using their company meal allowance to dine out, employees can now earn points that can be converted to meal donations. 

Sharebite has found success with a private sector approach to tackling America’s hunger crisis, with revenue surging 1,223% in three years. But the company also seeks out efficiencies that benefit local businesses and the environment. By utilizing a proprietary order-batching algorithm, Sharebite reduces delivery times and carbon emissions, while helping 80% of merchants avoid costly third-party platform fees.

Along the way, the company has brought some high-profile companies to the table—including Skims, Stitch Fix, Ring, Audible, Warner Music Group, and Wieden+Kennedy. By linking a company’s success to scale societal impact, Sharebite is nourishing local communities one meal at a time.

9. Cirrus Logic

For innovating on chips while pursuing sustainable manufacturing initiatives

For more than 40 years, Cirrus Logic has been pushing the boundaries of audio and mixed-signal performance with semiconductor chips that consume less power—and the company likewise pushes the boundaries of the impact it can make on communities and the environment. In 2025, the company announced it has already slashed its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 78% from its 2021 baseline—putting it well ahead of the curve for a 90% reduction by 2030. 

While Cirrus Logic’s progress toward its sustainability goals has been accelerated by its shift to renewable energy sources, now accounting for more than 86% of energy consumption. What’s more, the company has also pushed its manufacturing partners toward renewable adoption and made upgrades to make its facilities more efficient. Meanwhile, employee-led initiatives have identified new ways to divert waste from landfills and the company culture encourages breakthroughs with a $10,000 annual stipend for employees to pursue continuing education and by hosting internal global innovation conferences.

10. Alpha Structural

For providing pro bono structural damage assessments for homeowners affected by the L.A. fires

In the wake of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, Alpha Structural proved that a structural engineering firm can also build peace of mind. Though it specializes in the repair, reinforcement, and rebuilding of foundations, hillsides, and critical infrastructure, the company quickly pivoted to help affected communities. In addition to clearing blocked evacuation routes and restoring safe access for approximately 3,000 homes, Alpha Structural went a step further to ease the stress homeowners were feeling by offering 27 pro bono structural assessments—an essential first step to any rebuilding process. By identifying which homes were still structurally viable, its pro bono services helped homeowners avoid unnecessary rebuilds, for an estimated savings of more than $9 million.

By serving as a bridge between disaster and rebuilding, Alpha Structural also fielded hundreds of fire-related inquiries and offered dozens of free consultations. It also launched a dedicated Forensic Engineering Team in 2025 to evaluate compromised land and structures following natural disasters.

Explore the full 2026 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 720 honorees that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 59 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more.