Forbes Top 50 AI Companies
Forbes annually recognizes the most promising privately-held AI companies
Forbes 2025
More than two years after the blockbuster launch of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence continues to be the white hot center of venture capital and the business world at large. Some of the buzziest startups have shifted focus from the AI model release horserace to building useful applications and products on top of existing models, automating scutwork across fields like engineering, healthcare, legal and sales. That's evident in Forbes' seventh annual AI 50 list, produced in partnership with Sequoia and Meritech Capital, which spotlights the most promising privately-held AI companies in the world.
Newcomers to the list include $2.5 billion-valued Anysphere (better known as Cursor), a three year-old AI startup that helps engineers write and edit code and has at least $100 million in annualized revenue; the $1 billion-valued AI language tutor app Speak, which is used by some 10 million people to learn English and Spanish; and Massachusetts-based unicorn OpenEvidence, which is building an AI-powered search platform that summarizes medical information for doctors.
Model builders like OpenAI and Anthropic remain the biggest companies on the list, having raised large sums of cash from marquee Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The two AI behemoths have accumulated a combined $81 billion in venture funding, more than half of the total $142.45 billion that companies on this year's AI 50 list have raised. But this year, there's also a hefty new competition from Elon Musk's xAI ($12.1 billion in funding) and former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's stealthy startup Thinking Machine Labs, which is developing broadly capable AI systems and reportedly raising $1 billion at a valuation of about $9 billion. Meanwhile, Fei Fei Li, known as the "godmother of AI", has launched her own startup too, World Labs ($291.5 million raised), to develop models that can understand physical spaces. And then there's enterprise AI company Writer ($326 million raised), which is training its own models to handle mundane business tasks like writing marketing blogs and searching through troves of documents. (Read our feature story on Writer here.)
Artificial intelligence companies (whether apps or model makers) typically rely on expensive silicon chips and energy-intensive data centers for computing power to train and run their models and applications. That's been advantageous for a cohort of infrastructure providers like $2.8 billion-valued Crusoe, $2.5 billion-valued Lambda and $3.3 billion-valued Together AI, which have bubbled up to sate AI's voracious appetite for compute. (See our deep dive on Crusoe.)
But as companies spend billions of dollars on computing power to train ever larger, more capable models, startups like Chinese dark horse DeepSeek have shown that training can be done in a more cost efficient way. While DeepSeek isn't on the AI 50 list this year because the company's funding, revenues and business practices are opaque, you'll find a cohort of Chinese AI companies to watch here.
Some of these startups are grappling with industry-wide issues, one of the biggest being litigation over alleged copyright infringement that is still moving through the courts. Multiple startups on the list, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have been sued for allegedly training their AI models on millions of copyrighted works of art and intellectual property. Meanwhile, a growing group of publishers, artists, musicians and authors have expressed concerns that AI companies have illegally scraped their data from the internet to create tools that then compete with them, posing a threat to their livelihoods. Image and video generation tools like Runway and Midjourney were similarly sued by a group of artists in 2023. Elevenlabs, which develops AI tools to create cloned voices, has faced lawsuits from voice actors. Music generator Suno has faced copyright infringement-related legal action from major record labels for its music generation technology. Cohere and Perplexity have been met with criticism and legal action from a flurry of news publishers for alleged copyright infringement. Forbes sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity in June 2024, accusing it of infringing copyright and joined a class action lawsuit against Cohere in February for similar reasons. AI companies have broadly argued that their use of publicly available copyrighted content falls under fair use. But the future of AI ultimately hinges on court rulings on these suits.
This year was among the most competitive for the AI 50 list. Forbes received some 1,860 submissions. Applicants do not pay a fee to be considered and are judged for their business promise, technical talent and use of AI through a quantitative algorithm and qualitative judging panels. Companies are encouraged to share data on diversity, and our list aims to promote a more equitable startup ecosystem. For more, see our full package of coverage, including a detailed explanation of the list methodology, videos and analyses on trends in AI. Read the full article
Companies in bold face type are new to the Forbes list (see below):
| Company | What it Does |
Abridge |
AI notetaker for doctors |
Anthropic |
AI model developer |
AI coding tools, Cursor product |
|
Baseten |
AI app deployment software |
Video editor, Mirage product |
|
AI go-to-market tools |
|
Data labeling software |
|
Cohere |
AI model developer |
AI infrastructure |
|
Databricks |
Data storage and analytics |
AI agents for customer service |
|
DeepL |
Language translation service |
ElevenLabs |
Voice generation software |
Figure AI |
Humanoid robots |
AI app development software |
|
Glean |
Enterprise search engine |
Harvey |
Legal automation software |
Hebbia |
General purpose AI for finance and legal |
Hugging Face |
Open-source library for AI models |
AI cloud provider |
|
LangChain |
AI app development tools |
Enterprise contract automation |
|
AI-powered hiring platform |
|
Midjourney |
Image generation service |
Mistral AI |
Open source AI model developer |
Notion |
Productivity software |
OpenAI |
AI model developer |
ChatGPT for doctors |
|
Perplexity AI |
AI search engine |
Photoroom |
Photo editing app |
Pika |
Video generation service |
Runway |
Video and image editing software |
AI models for science and research |
|
AI chipmaker |
|
Scale AI |
Data labeling and AI infrastructure |
Sierra |
Customer service software |
AI systems for robotics |
|
Enterprise data labelling |
|
AI language tutor |
|
Web and mobile app development |
|
Music and sound generation |
|
Synthesia |
AI avatar and video generator |
AI research company |
|
AI cloud provider |
|
Vannevar Labs |
Defense intelligence software |
AI data infrastructure software |
|
AI-powered coding tool |
|
Spatial intelligence |
|
Writer |
Enterprise AI software |
AI model developer |
Forbes 2024
By spring of 2023, the massive popularity of apps like ChatGPT had prompted a mass scramble among businesses trying to implement the latest advances in generative artificial intelligence. One year later, the craze continues. In turn, a new tech economy has emerged to help businesses develop and deploy AI-powered apps. That's reflected by the makeup of Forbes sixth annual AI 50, produced in partnership with Sequoia and Meritech Capital, which recognizes the most promising privately-held artificial intelligence companies.
The use cases are wide-ranging and far-reaching, as immediately evident from the three largest companies on the list in terms of valuation. Model maker OpenAI ($86 billion) counts customers from Morgan Stanley to the government of Iceland, while its rival Anthropic ($18.4 billion) is used by Bridgewater and the Boston Consulting Group. Databricks ($43 billion) sells its data analytics and AI deployment software to Shell and the United States Postal Service. For the startups on AI 50, the technology has evolved from capturing customers' imaginations to capturing billions of dollars in collective revenue. Then, there are companies that are seamlessly layering the latest advances in AI into their own apps. Abridge uses voice recognition and language summarization to deliver automated documentation of your visit to the doctor's office. Notion is making inroads into uprooting Google Workspace or Microsoft Office, while Perplexity wants to reinvent the search engine.
| Company | What it Does |
| Abridge | Medical conversation documentation |
| Adept | AI model developer |
| Anduril Industries | Defense software and hardware |
| Anthropic | AI model developer of Claude |
| Anyscale | AI app deployment software |
| AssemblyAI | Speech transcription tooling provider |
| Baseten | AI app deployment software |
| Cerebras Systems | Computer chip maker |
| Character.AI | Consumer chatbot app |
| Cleanlab | Error detection for data |
| Codeium | Coding autocompletion app |
| Cohere | AI model developer |
| Cradle | Protein design for drug discovery |
| Cresta | Call center agent assistance |
| Databricks | Data storage and analytics |
| DeepL | Language translation service |
| ElevenLabs | Voice generation software |
| Figure AI | Autonomous humanoid robots |
| Glean | Enterprise search engine |
| Harvey | AI models for law firms |
| Hebbia | Enterprise search engine |
| Hugging Face | Library for AI models and datasets |
| Insitro | Drug discovery and development |
| Kumo.AI | Data analytics software |
| LangChain | AI app development tools |
| Leonardo.AI | Image generation service |
| Midjourney | Image generation service |
| Mistral AI | Open-source AI model research |
| Notion | Productivity software |
| OpenAI | AI model developer of ChatGPT |
| Owkin | Drug discovery and development |
| Perplexity | General purpose search app |
| Photoroom | Photo editing app |
| Pika | Video generation service |
| Pinecone | Database software |
| Replicate | AI app deployment software |
| Rosebud AI | Video game design software |
| Runway | Image and video editing software |
| Sana | Enterprise learning and search |
| Scale AI | Data labeling and software |
| Sierra | Customer service software |
| Synthesia | AI avatar and video generator |
| Together AI | AI model development tools |
| Tome | Presentation creation software |
| Tractian | Industrial machine maintenance |
| Unstructured | AI app development tools |
| Vannevar Labs | Defense intelligence software |
| Waabi | Autonomous trucking technology |
| Weaviate | Database software |
| Writer | Enterprise generative AI software |
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