AI Pioneers: 25 Major AI Startups Shaping their Industries

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hotbed of talent, innovation, and exploration since the first Machine Learning (ML) models were developed and released in the early 2010s. Of the hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that have decided to shift their corporate strategy to implement AI, few stand among them by being to get ahead of the market and make AI applications their entire business model. As we will see below, most of these businesses have been duly rewarded for their foresight. Read on below to see how some AI darlings have fared since their inception with regards to organic growth. 

1. Cruise
2. Scale AI 
3. Checkr
4. Jasper AI 
5. People AI 
6. Standard AI 
7. Observe AI 
8. Mashgin
9. Jerry
10. Gecko Robotics
11. May Mobility
12. Ridecell 
13. Ambient AI 
14. Qventus
15. Zeitview
16. Memora Health 
17. Verge Sense 
18. Delphia 
19. DeepGram 
20. Netomi 
21. Assembly AI 
22. MarqVision 
23. Volley
24. Garten
25. BeGo

Cruise

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2013

Valuation: $30 billion

Employee Count: 2400

• Cruise is building the world’s most advanced, all-electric, self-driving car technology to safely connect people with the places, things, and experiences they care about. Self-driving cars will help save lives, reimagine cities, redefine time in transit, and restore freedom of movement for individuals who live in dense urban settings. Acquired by GM in 2016. (Source)
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• Founded in 2013, Cruise makes self-driving cars that have the potential to save millions of lives, reshape our cities, give people more spare time, and restore freedom of movement for many. (Source)
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• Cruise has received $10B from well-respected companies and investors—including GM, Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart—increasing its valuation 30x since being founded. (Source)

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Scale AI 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2016

Valuation: $7.3 billion

Employee Count: 600

• Scale accelerates the development of AI within organizations of any size to deliver critical business insights and operational efficiency. Its data-centric infrastructure platform leverages RLHF (Reinforced Learning with Human Feedback) to help organizations build the strongest AI models that supercharge their business, with customers across industries including Meta, Microsoft, U.S. Army, DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit, Open AI, General Motors, Toyota Research Institute, Brex, Instacart and Flexport. (Source)
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• The company is using image-gathering sensors on board models tested by volunteers to generate training data that enables the robot’s built-in AI system to learn how to better navigate a home, such as identifying kitchens, dining rooms and other locations by recognizing different household appliances or furniture (Source)

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Checkr

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $4.1 billion

Employee Count: 1200

• Over the last year, Checkr has been steadfast in providing our customers with the cutting-edge technology they need to deliver exceptional candidate experiences and to build diverse and high-performing teams. Most notably, Checkr launched product innovations like I-9 verification and Assess Standard, advancing speed and fairness in the hiring process.(Source)
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• Internally, Checkr launched an apprenticeship program to offer job experience and skills development to justice-impacted individuals, preparing them for future employment in the tech industry. (Source)

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Jasper AI 

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Founded: 2021

Valuation: $1.7 billion

Employee Count: 195

• Launched in February 2021, Jasper is an AI content platform that helps creators and companies of all types expand their creative potential. Over 105,000 active customers are using Jasper to break through writer’s block, repackage their content, create original art, and adjust writing for language and tone. (Source)
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• Jasper was founded in Jan '21 in Austin, Texas by Dave Rogenmoser, Chris Hull, and John Phillip Morgan. (Source)

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People AI 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2016

Valuation: $1.1 billion

Employee Count: 300

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Standard AI 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $1 billion

Employee Count: 150

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Observe AI 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $304 million

Employee Count: 240

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Mashgin

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $1.5 billion

Employee Count: 75

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• Mashgin creates better retail experiences through visual automation. They’ve built a self-checkout kiosk that uses computer vision to scan multiple items without barcodes, reducing checkout time by 10x. (Source)
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• The Mashgin Touchless Checkout System identifies items from virtually any angle and instantly rings them up in a single transaction. It doesn’t need barcodes or RFIDs, perfectly consistent packaging or particular orientations to work correctly. (Source)

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Jerry 

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $450 million

Employee Count: 288

• Jerry makes it really easy to save time and money on car expenses. The car ownership super app first launched its AI- and machine-learning-based car insurance compare-and-buy service in 2019. Today, Jerry serves more than 3 million customers as a licensed insurance broker and an authorized auto refinance provider, while also offering free telematics-based driver safety and repair estimator services. (Sources)
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• Jerry was founded in 2017 and its current CEO is Art Agrawal. Since its inception 7 years ago, Jerry has grown to 300 employees. (Source)

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Gecko Robotics 

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Founded: 2016

Annual Revenue: $500+ million

Employee Count: 230

• The mission of Gecko Robotics is to improve the state of the world by helping the most important institutions ensure the availability, reliability and sustainability of critical infrastructure. Gecko's combination of wall-climbing robots, industry-leading sensors, and an AI-powered data platform give customers a unique window into the health of their physical assets allowing real-time decisions that prevent power outages, ensure military missions succeed, and help reduce energy costs. (Source)
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• In the three years since its launch in 2016, Gecko Robotics has managed to grow from a small team of Pittsburgh robotics experts hailing from Carnegie Mellon. Indeed, the company has added more than 100 new employees. The hiring push has been largely around creating a team of qualified experts in particular market segments who can operate the robots that Gecko deploys to industrial work sites. (Source)

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May Mobility 

Headquarters: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $1+ billion

Employee Count: 260

• May Mobility is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology development and deployment. With more than 300,000 autonomous rides to date, May Mobility is committed to delivering safe, efficient and sustainable shuttle solutions designed to complement today’s public transportation options. (Source)
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• Brunelle is CFO of May Mobility, a developer of autonomous vehicle technology aiming to provide micro-transit services using driverless vehicles to municipalities and enterprise customers. May Mobility raised a $105 million series D funding round led by Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone not long after Brunelle joined in November 2023. (Source)

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Ridecell 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2011

Valuation: $100-500 million

Employee Count: 211

• Ridecell is leading the way in the digital transformation of fleet businesses and operations. Their Fleet Automation and Mobility solutions modernize and monetize fleets by combining data insights with digital vehicle control to turn today’s manual processes into automated workflows. (Source)
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• Ridecell powers some of the most successful fleet businesses in cities across Europe and North America, including Arval; GIG Car Share, powered by AAA NCNU; and KINTO by Toyota Sweden. (Source)

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Ambient AI 

Headquarters: San Jose, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $260 million

Employee Count: 95

• Ambient.ai is a computer vision intelligence company transforming enterprise security operations to prevent security incidents before they happen. The Ambient.ai platform applies AI and computer vision intelligence to existing sensor and camera infrastructure to deliver continuous physical security monitoring and automate the immediate dispatch of human resources. (Source)
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• The Ambient.ai Context Graph assesses three risk factors to determine next steps: the context of the location, the movements that create behavior signatures, and the type of objects interacting in a scene. Based on these factors, the platform can dispatch security personnel to handle the incident, validate risks, or trigger proactive alerts. (Source)

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Qventus 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $250m

Employee Count: 163

• Qventus’ mission is to simplify how healthcare operates so it just works — for everyone. The company offers an AI-based software platform that helps hospital teams make better operational decisions in real-time. Qventus addresses operational challenges across the hospital including emergency departments, perioperative areas, patient safety, in-patient, outpatient and pharmacy. (Source)
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• Located in Silicon Valley, Qventus is honored to be working with leading public, academic and community hospitals across the United States. (Source)

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Zeitview

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $220—330 mililon

Employee Count: 200

• At Zeitview, their goal is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. They do this by combining advanced inspection software with the ability to capture visual data in more than 60 countries. This allows them to deliver safer, faster, lower-cost inspections of energy and infrastructure assets with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability. (Source)
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• Zeitview uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to ingest and analyze vast amounts of visual data to provide objective insights that their customers can act on immediately. (Source)

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Memora Health 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2016

Valuation: N/A

Employee Count: 115

• Memora Health helps healthcare organizations digitize and automate complex care workflows, making them simple for patients and clinicians to navigate. Memora ingests existing data on clinical workflows, converts them into cohesive messaging journeys that guide patients through their care episodes, and automates the completion of simple follow-up tasks in the EMR. (Source)
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• Memora's platform reduces care team notifications by nearly 40%, has a >70 average NPS, and has improved clinical outcomes across various populations. (Source)

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Verge Sense 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $240—360 million

Employee Count: 70

• VergeSense is pioneering the occupancy intelligence movement. Occupancy intelligence is how workplace, real estate, and facilities teams gain a true understanding of how and when their portfolio and spaces are actually used so they don’t have to compromise between reducing cost and improving employee experience in a world where occupancy is increasingly dynamic. (Source)
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• They’re analyzing over 67M sq ft of space across 43 countries around the world -  and with over 188% growth in 2022 they are showing strong growth potential. (Source)

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Delphia

Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $240—360 million

Employee Count: 35

• Delphia is building a new kind of asset manager that rethinks the value of data and how it can be used to gain an edge in forecasting markets. We believe that actively managing people’s data can unlock new forms of wealth creation for individual and institutional investors alike. (Source)
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• Delphia bridges traditional and decentralized finance, enabling its members to build wealth by investing their data, beginning an AI investment strategy that aims to outperform the market.(Source)

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DeepGram

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2016

Valuation: $18.8 million

Employee Count: 2400

• Deepgram is a foundational AI company on a mission to understand human language. They give  developers access to the most advanced speech AI transcription and understanding with just an API call. (Source)
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• Currently working to make voice intelligence available to all with faster, more accurate, more scalable speech recognition made possible by end-to-end deep learning. (Source)

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Netomi 

Headquarters: San Mateo, California

Founded: 2015

Valuation: $210 million

Employee Count: 104

• he market leader in AI-first customer experience, Netomi enables companies to build deep engagement in this new era with conversations that are emotional, empathetic, intuitive, and on brand. (Source)
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• Backed by industry titans like Y-Combinator, Index Ventures, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Greg Brockman, Netomi AI is at the forefront of defining the future of AI-driven customer engagement. (Source)

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Assembly AI 

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2017

Valuation: $200—300 million

Employee Count: 65

• AssemblyAI is an applied AI company. They research, train, and deploy State-of-the-Art AI models for developers and product teams to integrate into their products/apps. Today, they offer AI models for audio transcription, content moderation, summarization, topic detection, and many other tasks. (Source)
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• AssemblyAI first started in 2017 with a shared vision to create new, superhuman Speech AI models that will be able to unlock an entirely new class of applications and products to be built leveraging voice data. Since then, our technology has been widely deployed to millions of end-users. (Source)

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MarqVision 

Headquarters: Los Angeles, California

Founded: 2020

Valuation: $80—120 million

Employee Count: 90

• Founded by Harvard Law Students and backed by Softbank, DST Global and Y Combinator, MarqVision raised a $20 million Series A round in June 2022. (Source)
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• Trusted by industry leaders like LVMH, Casetify, Gentle Monster, Pokémon, Calvin Klein, and Tommy Hilfiger, MarqVision is shaping the future of IP protection and fostering a world where creativity and innovation can thrive. (Source)

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Volley

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2016

Valuation: N/A

Employee Count: 75

• Volley was founded by Max Child and James Wilsterman in 2016. (Source)
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• Volley is the leading developer of voice AI games for smart speaker platforms like Amazon Alexa, smartphones, and connected TVs. (Source)

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Garten

Headquarters: Burlingame, California

Founded: 2014

Valuation: N/A

Employee Count: 201

• Garten partners with forward-thinking businesses to promote change and improve employee engagement. (Source)
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• Garten has built a sophisticated tech stack utilizing AI and IoT to enable a flexible supply chain, being completely asset lite, and full wellbeing analytics. They currently work with some of world’s top companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Kaiser, Stanford, Stripe, Nike, Lyft. (Source)

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BeGo

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2019

Valuation: $56—84 million

Employee Count: 65

• In Mexico and US trucking demand outpaces capacity, yet 40% of the time trucks roll empty. BeGo uses Machine Learning to reduce empty returns, deadheads, and carbon emissions. (Source)
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• BeGo is co-founded by two brothers, Jasiel, with 10+ years of experience in the industry, and Ivan, ex-Tesla engineer with experience in product design and machine learning. (Source)

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Conclusion

Ranging from the automotive sector to healthcare, it’s clear that AI applications and AI-focused businesses have proven to be wildly successful. Looking towards the future, the limitless possibilities to apply AI and the power the technology holds to create value, redefine industries, and solve global issues can only be underscored by the achievements of the companies above. One can only imagine how the field of AI will continue to disrupt our relationship with technology and how we carry out daily tasks.