eyes on ai
3 Houston-area companies appear on Fortune’s inaugural AI ranking
Three companies based in the Houston area appear on Fortune’s inaugural list of the top adopters of AI among Fortune 500 companies.
The three companies are:
- No. 7 energy company ExxonMobil, based in Spring
- No. 7 tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, based in Spring
- No. 47 energy company Chevron, based in Houston
All three companies have taken a big dive into the AI pool.
In 2024, ExxonMobil’s executive chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, explained that AI would play a key role in achieving a $15 billion reduction in operating costs by 2027.
“There is a concerted effort to make sure that we're really working hard to apply that new technology to the opportunity set within the company to drive effectiveness and efficiency,” Woods told Wall Street analysts.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is also employing AI to decrease costs. In March, the company announced a restructuring plan — including the elimination of 3,000 jobs — aimed at cutting about $350 million in annual expenses. The restructuring is scheduled to wrap up by the end of October.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Catalyst cost-cutting program includes a push to use AI across the company to improve efficiency, Marie Myers, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts in June.
“Our ambition is clear: A leaner, faster, and more competitive organization. Nothing is off limits. We are focused on rethinking the business — not just reducing our costs, but transforming the way we operate,” Myers said.
At Chevron, AI tools are being used to quickly analyze data and extract insights from it, according to tech news website VentureBeat. Also, Chevron employs advanced AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) to create engineering standards, specifications and safety alerts. AI is even being put to work in Chevron’s exploration initiatives.
Bill Braun, Chevron’s chief information officer, said at a VentureBeat-sponsored event in 2024 that AI-savvy data scientists, or “digital scholars,” are always embedded within workplace teams “to act as a catalyst for working differently.”
The Fortune AIQ 50 ranking is based on ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index, an annual measurement of how prepared organizations are to adopt and scale AI. To evaluate how Fortune 500 companies are rolling out AI and how much they value AI investments, Fortune teamed up with Enterprise Technology Research. The results went into computing an AIQ score for each company.
At the top of the ranking is Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), followed by Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia and Mastercard.
Aside from ExxonMobil, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Chevron, two other Texas companies made the list: Arlington-based homebuilder D.R. Horton (No. 29) and Austin-based software company Oracle (No. 37).
“The Fortune AIQ 50 demonstrates how companies across industry sectors are beginning to find real value from the deployment of AI technology,” Jeremy Kahn, Fortune’s AI editor, said in a news release. “Clearly, some sectors, such as tech and finance, are pulling ahead of others, but even in so-called 'old economy' industries like mining and transport, there are a few companies that are pulling away from their peers in the successful use of AI.”