Exclusive: Greater Boston's most influential companies

A dozen Greater Boston companies made a new list of the world's most influential companies.

Driving the news: Moderna, Enel and Bain Capital were among the Boston-area companies that made the first Signal AI 500 Index, joining some of the world's most popular brands like Apple, LG and Toyota.

• Tech giants including Google, Amazon and Samsung, which are based elsewhere but have offices in Boston or Cambridge, topped the list.

Signal AI, a London-based startup, has in-house technology that ranks corporate reputations using financial data, news coverage in 150 languages and other information found online. 

• The startup's rankings also break down a company's score based on its growth, workplace culture, innovation and other factors. 
• The ranking includes companies across 30 industries. 

Why it matters: The list offers a data-driven look at companies that are influential, and breaks it down by their reputation around performance, workplace culture, social responsibility and other areas. 

What they're saying: "Fueled by digesting billions of data points with AI, we're finally able to rank the reputation of companies across dozens of sectors — like New Balance, Liberty Mutual and Moderna — and reveal precisely why they're scrutinized, shrugged off, or celebrated," says Dan Gaynor, co-founder of Kelp Data, a Boston-based startup that Signal AI recently acquired.

Details: Signal AI's Index suggests that doing business well is the biggest driver of favorable reputations, the company tells Axios. 

• Companies that focus on ethical supply chains, philanthropy and environment and climate storytelling ranked higher in the "purpose" category, which evaluates a company's commitment to workplace culture, diversity, climate resiliency and other corporate responsibility metrics. 

In the life sciences sector, Cambridge-based Moderna, Sanofi and Takeda made the top 100. Waltham-based PerkinElmer, which will soon split into two businesses, ranked 337th.

Other Boston-area companies that made the overall list include Tripadvisor, financial services company State Street Corp. and real estate firm American Tower.

• Framingham-based TJX Companies and Burlington-based Keurig Dr Pepper also made the list.