TED is a non-profit organization dedicated to ideas that deserve to be disseminated. Started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago, TED has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED conferences invite the world's leading thinkers and practitioners to speak for up to 18 minutes. Many of these speeches are then made available, free of charge, on TED.com. TED speakers include Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.

The annual TED Conference is held every spring in Vancouver, British Columbia. TED media initiatives include TED.com, where the new TED Talks are published daily; the Open Translation project, which provides interactive subtitles and transcriptions and translations of volunteers all over the world; the educational initiative TED-Ed. TED established the TED Prize, where exceptional people with a desire to change the world get help to turn their desires into action; TEDx, which supports individuals or groups in hosting local-style, self-organized TED events around the world, and the TED Fellows program, helping innovators who change the world to amplify the impact of their major projects and activities worldwide .