What is AI?
AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, specifically computer systems. It involves the development of algorithms and technologies that enable computers to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, solving complex problems, learning from experience, and making decisions.
There are two main types of AI:
1. Narrow AI (Weak AI): This type of AI is designed and trained for a specific task or a narrow range of tasks. It excels in performing a single task very well but lacks the ability to generalize its knowledge to other areas. Examples include voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, as well as recommendation algorithms used by streaming services.
2. General AI (Strong AI): General AI refers to machines with human-like intelligence. These systems would have the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, similar to how humans can. Achieving this level of AI is a complex challenge that researchers are still working towards.
AI techniques include machine learning, which involves training algorithms on large datasets to improve their performance over time, and deep learning, which is a subset of machine learning using artificial neural networks to model and process complex patterns. AI has a wide range of applications across various industries, including healthcare, finance, transportation, entertainment, and more.
So what are Artificial Intelligence companies?
AI companies are startups and corporations working on technologies and products that simulate human intelligence. Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022 many software tech companies have pivoted to become AI companies. There's also been a flurry of new startups launching in response to the AI boom. ChatGPT is a large language model that takes in massive amounts of content and "big data" from the internet that then trains the algorithm to answer questions or write code in a way that previously only humans could. Microsoft reached a complex investment deal with OpenAI, investing billions in the company for a share of future profits. The move was a clear swipe at taking web and mobile search revenue from Google's business. Startups and developers are building their own AI systems in response to this technological shift. Many think that AI could be the end of Google's search monopoly, but a large part of this narrative is crafted by Google's own legal teams in response to the antitrust pressure they're under from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Google and their holding company, Alphabet, want to show that there's lots of competition in the search and online advertising industry, and that they're not a monopoly when they are.
Read more: The First Big Antitrust Trial of the Century Is About to Start
At the high end, most of the big technology (i.e. Big Tech) companies are wading into AI, building their own language models, harvesting information, building products and pursuing customers. There's a dominant philosophy in tech that only one or a handful of tech companies can win the market by building a platform. We see this in Amazon's domination of e-commerce and Meta's domination of social networking. Large firms can use predatory pricing to build expensive products and sell them below the cost of making them. This blocks entrepreneurs from entering the market because they cannot compete with the subsidized products put forth by the big guys. The result is an American economy dominated by big firms.
That's not to say though that there aren't a lot of smaller companies taking advantage of the technological advances from AI. For example, there are a lot of AI dating apps, advancements in personalized B2C marketing, and even AI tools to help people learn new languages. Ultimately the advancement in AI has led to new opportunities for solopreneurs to leapfrog existing products and deliver new value to customers. Technological advancements have made AI chatbots a feature of today's internet. It remains to be seen if AI companies will consolidate into a few Big Tech players or remain a pathway of upward mobility for Americans.
Who are the leading AI companies?
Here are some of the biggest enterprise businesses owning AI today:
- Alphabet: Way back in 2017, six Google employees published a research paper titled Attention Is All You Need that introduced a new concept called the Transformer that made it possible to make better AI models in less time. It was a foundational shift in the world of artificial intelligence, yet Google largely sat on the development for years until they were forced to act because of the public ChatGPT release. Nevertheless, with their near infinite money from their stranglehold on web search they're a might player in the AI space.
- Microsoft: they've reached a revenue sharing partnership with OpenAI and the new capabilities OpenAI make it into Microsoft Bing's search engine. They were investigated for antitrust violations in the 90s and are still trying to buy their way to a monopoly in the gaming space today. Microsoft is a huge player in AI, especially through their investment in OpenAI.
- IBM: Founded in 1911, IBM was subject to a massive antitrust trial in 1969 that lasted thirteen years. The issue then was IBM controlling 70% of computers and restricting access to software modifications. "Big Blue" employed predatory tactics and lawsuits to make sure all computer hardware and computer software had to be bought through them. The entire computer sector was controlled by one company, limiting innovation. Fortunately, because of antitrust laws and government action, IBM announced the unbundling of hardware and software on January 1, 1970. Most programmers will be familiar with this date as it's the beginning of Unix time and the beginning of the modern software movement. Today, IBM remains a massive tech company and in the running to own a large share of the $16 trillion AI market.
- NVIDIA (NVDA): Their people build the tools and hardware required for AI companies to run. They're pouring millions of investments into their biggest customers like Hugging Face. They're an important team in the AI space, spending over $190 million on lobbying American politicians so far in 2023.
The Rise of AI Domain names
At Employbl we're tracking tens of thousands of tech companies and startups, along with their websites, investors and headquarters locations. It's a big job but we enjoy it and it's a service desperately missing for the American public. Recently we put together a list of companies that have .AI domain names to help people discover new ai startups. It's noteworthy there's a boom in these AI domain names, that actually is the reserved domain for a 35 square mile nation in the Caribbean called Anguilla.
Who are the most well-funded AI companies?
A number of Venture Capitalists (VC), angels and institutional investors have been pouring money into artificial intelligence startups so that those companies can invest in product growth. As of Fall 2023 these are the AI companies that have raised the most money. Click on each company's profile in order to view more info about their business and financial history.
| Company Name | HQ City | Year Founded | latest_round | Total Investment Amount | Company Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook AI | Menlo Park | 2004 | Post Ipo Debt | $24,622,817,280 | Facebook AI offers technology and engineering services like theory, algorithms, applications, software and hardware infrastructure. |
| Cruise Automation | San Francisco | 2013 | Corporate Round | $15,118,798,848 | Cruise Automation is a self-driving car company that develops an autopilot system for existing cars. |
| OpenAI | San Francisco | 2015 | Series Unknown | $11,300,120,576 | OpenAI is a non-profit AI research company, discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence. |
| Airbnb | San Francisco | 2008 | Debt Financing | $6,423,131,648 | Book unique homes and experiences all over the world. |
| Argo AI | Pittsburgh | 2016 | Corporate Round | $3,600,000,000 | We’re building self-driving technology you can trust. |
| Databricks | San Francisco | 2013 | Series H | $3,496,999,936 | Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business. |
| Magic Leap | Plantation | 2010 | Series Unknown | $3,478,500,096 | Magic Leap is an American startup company that released a head-mounted virtual retinal display, called Magic Leap One, which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects. |
| Anduril Industries | Costa Mesa | 2017 | Series E | $2,171,000,064 | Anduril Industries, Inc. provides security solutions. The Company offers solutions for military based security, energy facility protection, wildfire detection, and infrastructure defense. Anduril Industries provides its services in the United States. |
| UiPath | New York | 2005 | Series F | $1,993,024,896 | UiPath is a global software company for robotic process automation (RPA) founded in Romania by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă and headquartered in New York City. |
| Anthropic | San Francisco | 2021 | Series C | $1,454,000,000 | Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. |
| SambaNova | Palo Alto | 2017 | Series D | $1,141,254,656 | SambaNova Systems, Inc. provides software solutions. The Company offers building machine learning and big data analytics platforms which enables optimum performance for any ML training, inference, and analytics models. SambaNova Systems serves customers in the United States. |
| WeRide.ai | San Jose | 2017 | Corporate Round | $1,110,000,000 | WeRide is a smart mobility company in China that creates leading L4 autonomous driving technologies. It is the first in China and second in the world to test fully driverless cars on open roads. We have committed ourselves to new mobility services that will be accessible and beneficial to everyone. |
| Pony.ai | Fremont | 2016 | Series C | $1,092,999,936 | Pony.ai is an autonomous vehicle technology company co-located in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou. |
| Automation Anywhere | San Jose | 2003 | Debt Financing | $1,052,699,968 | Automation Anywhere, Inc. was founded in 2007. The company's line of business includes the wholesale distribution of computers, computer peripheral equipment, and computer software. |
| Dataminr | New York | 2009 | Series F | $1,052,012,608 | Dataminr's clients are the first to know about critical events and breaking information, enabling them to act faster and stay one step ahead. |
| Zoox | Foster City | 2014 | Convertible Note | $1,005,000,000 | Zoox is an American autonomous vehicle company currently headquartered in Foster City, California, United States with multiple offices of operations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The company was founded in 2014, and then acquired by Amazon in 2020. |
| DataRobot | Boston | 2012 | Series G | $1,000,598,016 | DataRobot, Inc. provides Internet based services. The Company develops and markets Internet software to collect and connect predictive models for data science, to provide statistical models to customers. DataRobot operates in Massachusetts. |
| DMAI | Los Angeles | 2017 | Series B | $1,000,000,000 | We at DMAI believe cognitive AI and personalized learning platforms can give people the motivation to advance their lives while empowering teachers and healthcare professionals to provide more personalized instruction and care. |
| Olive | Columbus | 2012 | Series H | $856,322,176 | Olive deploys the AI workforce built specifically for healthcare, delivering hospitals and health systems increased revenue, reduced costs, and increased capacity. |
| Sema4 | Stamford | 2017 | Post Ipo Equity | $791,000,000 | Sema4 is a rapidly growing patient-centered health intelligence company founded on the idea that more information, deeper analysis, and increased engagement will improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. |
| Niantic | San Francisco | 2010 | Series D | $770,000,000 | Niantic, Inc. is an American software development company based in San Francisco. Niantic is best known for developing the augmented reality mobile games Ingress and Pokémon Go |
| Socure | New York | 2012 | Debt Financing | $744,400,000 | Socure Inc. offers online identity verification solutions that protect enterprises against identity fraud. |
| Insitro | South San Francisco | 2018 | Series C | $743,000,000 | Insitro is an operator of a data-driven drug discovery and development company that utilizes machine learning and high-throughput biology to transform the way that drugs are discovered and delivered to patients. |
| Cerebras Systems | Sunnyvale | 2016 | Series F | $715,000,000 | Cerebras is a stealth-mode startup backed by premier venture capitalists and industry leading technologists. |
| Petal | New York | 2016 | Secondary Market | $704,600,000 | Petal Card, Inc. issues credit cards. |
| States Title | San Francisco | 2016 | Post Ipo Equity | $679,615,168 | States Title, Inc. provides platform as a service. The Company focuses on predictive analytics platform for the title insurance space for simple, safe, and accessible home ownership. |
| Checkr | San Francisco | 2014 | Series E | $679,000,000 | Checkr’s mission is to build a fairer future by improving understanding of the past. Our platform makes it easy for thousands of customers to hire millions of people every year. |
| Pagaya | New York | 2016 | Post Ipo Equity | $646,249,984 | Pagaya Investments (Pagaya) is a financial technology company reshaping the asset management space using machine learning and big data analytics to manage institutional money. |
| Uniphore | Palo Alto | 2008 | Series E | $620,875,008 | Powered by the human voice. |
| You & Mr Jones | New York | 2015 | Series B | $610,000,000 | You & Mr Jones is the world's first Brandtech group. Building brands better, faster and cheaper, using technology. |
Below is a list of all Artificial Intelligence companies. You can also head to the companies page to filter through and find AI companies combined with other tags like so:
