Three Dallas companies among Time Magazine’s most influential of 2023

Three Dallas-based companies have made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential of 2023: Cost Plus Drugs, Colossal Biosciences and Therabody.

Only the San Francisco Bay area, New York, Los Angeles and London placed more companies on the list and the Dallas-area tied with Paris.

The list, released Wednesday, has been published every year since 2021. It’s divided into leaders, disrupters, innovators, titans and pioneers. It’s modeled after the magazine’s well-known annual list of the 100 most influential people, first published in 1999.

Cost Plus Drugs, which made the list as a disrupter, cuts out the middleman to allow customers to buy prescription drugs online directly, making them much more affordable. The Mark Cuban-backed venture launched in 2022 by selling 100 generic drugs at a flat 15% markup plus pharmacy fee, but is looking to expand. It recently began taking some insurance, and, according to Time, will soon be adding specialty drugs and biosimilars to its catalog. It is also building a facility in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood to manufacture its own medications. All this in addition to hitting the 2 million customer mark earlier this year.

Colossal Biosciences, another disrupter, is the company behind the Jurassic Park-esque mission to de-extinct-ify the wooly mammoth. Last month, it sequenced the genome of the Asian elephant, which shares 99.6% of its DNA with the mammoth and could be combined with DNA samples from mammoth remains. The company, launched in 2021, has secured $225 million in funding so far and is inching closer to its sci-fi goals. However, it says it also takes on these genome sequencing projects in the name of conservation, citing the importance of reference genomes to conservation research.

Therabody, an innovator, is most known for its Theragun massage gun, but it made the list for its recent addition of 15 new products to its lineup over the past two years. The company, previously known as just Theragun, rebranded as Therabody in 2020 and has since added products like a skincare device, a massaging eye mask and a vibrating compression sleeve. Therabody had nearly $400 million in sales in 2021 – nearly doubling its previous year’s sales of $224 million. The privately-owned company has not disclosed 2022 sales.

The Los Angeles-based company established a second U.S. headquarters in Dallas’ East Quarter in 2021.

Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin also made the list for its high mobility artillery rocket launchers and Javelin guided anti-tank missiles, both of which have been instrumental in Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russian invasion. The rocket launch system is produced by Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, based in Grand Prairie.