The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.
Verizon ranks #149 overall with an Overall Score of 54.5, which places it above the median but not in the leadership tier. Its strongest dimensions are AI Rank #26 and Resilience Rank #48, a combination that says the company is being credited for technology readiness and durability. In the telecom group, Verizon sits 2nd out of 3 listed companies, behind T-Mobile but well ahead of AT&T.
The problem is operating speed. Verizon’s Agility Rank is #447, one of the weakest in the dataset, and Innovation is only #250. The strategic read is that Verizon screens as a resilient, AI-aware incumbent, but not as a company that is structurally fast-moving. That matters because telecom is moving toward network automation, edge compute, enterprise connectivity, and AI-enabled service models, where organizational velocity will increasingly separate winners from regulated-utility-like carriers.
Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026