#2 Baidu

2012 Fastest-Growing rank: 3

Previous rank: 4

CEO: Jason Rhode

Robin Li and Eric Xu founded Baidu Inc. on January 18, 2000. The company is headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China. Baidu offers many services, including a Chinese language search engine for websites, audio files, images and generating online marketing tools like its "pay for placement" (P4P) platform, which let companies create their own text-based-ads that appear in search listings. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum.

Baidu's growth continued to show in the company's stellar results for 2011: earnings rose 77% to $326 million on sales of $2.3 billion.

#1 Cirrus Logic

2012 Fastest-Growing rank: 2

Previous rank: 11

CEO: Jason Rhode

Dr. Suhas Patil founded Cirrus Logic in 1984 in Fremont, California. It is a premier supplier of high-precision analog and digital signal processing components for audio and energy markets.

In 2011, Cirrus Logic's revenues climbed 67% to nearly $370 million; sales to clients in Asia also continued to climb for the third year in a row.