The 50 Smartest Companies of 2017 might not be what you think

Summary Created by Alibaba (No. 41) in 2014 to operate its rapidly expanding Alipay mobile payments service, Ant Financial has staked out global ambitions, investing in financial ventures in India, Thailand, Singapore, and the U.S. The company executes over half of all mobile-payment transactions in China, with more than 450 million annual active users. Ant is building artificial intelligence into new products, including an insurance claim system that uses machine learning to process images of accidents taken on a smartphone, using them to determine how serious the damage is and begin to process the claim with an insurer. The company, which reportedly holds billions of dollars in customers' money before and after executing transactions, has also begun to offer small loans to consumers, evaluating their creditworthiness partly on the basis of their spending history.