By one measure, Spring-based tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprises reigns as the most future-ready Houston-area company on the S&P 500 stock index.

HPE sits at No. 72 in a first-time ranking of the best S&P 500 companies for the future. Including HPE, 23 Houston-area companies appear on the list.

Published by The Wall Street Journal, the ranking was created by Bendable Labs for the WSJ Leadership Institute. It evaluates how S&P 500 companies stack up in six areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility. To be ranked, a company had to be part of the S&P 500 as of Dec. 31.

Among the six categories, HPE ranked highest for innovation (No. 30) among local companies. The WSJ didn’t say why HPE scored so well for innovation. However, the company stands out in this category thanks to:

• Creation of the El Capitan and Frontier supercomputing systems
• Research into photonic computing and quantum networking
• Last year’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, giving HPE an edge in AI-native networking
• Establishment of the everything-as-a-service GreenLake hybrid cloud platform for data centers, colocation facilities and edge computing environments

In an interview with the Six Five podcast at HPE Discover 2025 in Las Vegas, CEO Antonio Neri said the company’s strategy is “basically founded on innovation, and that innovation drives shareholder value over the long term.”

While HPE fared well in the innovation category, it ranked toward the bottom for financial fitness. What’s behind the No. 430 ranking in the financial category? HPE’s low score likely reflects a debt-heavy acquisition strategy coupled with a historically low-margin hardware business.

Here’s the full list of the 23 Houston-area companies included in the ranking of the best companies for the future:

• No. 72 Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• No. 105 SLB
• No. 120 Baker Hughes
• No. 125 ConocoPhillips
• No. 158 NRG Energy
• No. 176 Targa Resources
• No. 185 Chevron
• No. 195 Halliburton
• No. 223 Coterra Energy
• No. 229 Waste Management
• No. 235 Exxon Mobil
• No. 250 Kinder Morgan
• No. 257 Quanta Services
• No. 276 CenterPoint Energy
• No. 285 Sysco
• No. 313 Occidental Petroleum
• No. 318 Camden Property Trust
• No. 333 EOG Resources
• No. 365 LyondellBasell Industries
• No. 373 Comfort Systems USA
• No. 401 Crown Castle
• No. 408 Phillips 66
• No. 500 APA