Top AI Unicorns in 2024

Top AI Unicorns in 2024

A unicorn startup refers to a privately-held company that reaches a valuation of $1 billion or more. According to our methodology, Artificial Intelligence is a sub-industry within Software & Data, alongside other sub-industries such as Cybersecurity, Enterprise Technologies, and SaaS, among others. On our global unicorn map, there are 94 AI unicorns, representing 19% of all Software & Data unicorns, making it the largest sub-industry within this category in terms of unicorn representation. Below, we presented the top ai unicorns in 2024, sorted by their SB Score taking into account factors such as total investment, website traffic and employee count.

1. OpenAI

SB Score: 1000

Location: San Francisco, United States

OpenAI is a pioneering artificial intelligence research lab responsible for creating some of the most powerful AI tools today, such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT. It gained unicorn status early in its journey due to its ground-breaking advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and has continued to grow, particularly after launching its GPT models for public use. OpenAI OpenAI is a pioneering artificial intelligence research lab responsible for creating some of the most powerful AI tools today, such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT. It gained unicorn status early in its journey due to its ground-breaking advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and has continued to grow, particularly after launching its GPT models for public use. OpenAI collaborates with tech giants like Microsoft and has been pivotal in shaping modern AI capabilities.It also joined forces with companies like Google and Anthropic to form the Frontier Model Forum, focusing on responsible AI development.

2. ByteDance

SB Score: 790

Location: Beijing, China

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has recently expanded its presence in generative AI with the launch of four new apps: Cici AI, Coze, ChitChop, and BagelBell, which target users outside of China. These apps, rolled out over the past three months, allow users to create and share chatbots or generate fictional stories. Cici AI, ChitChop, and Coze are platforms for bot creation, enabling users to develop personalized chatbots, while BagelBell is an interactive storytelling app where readers can influence the direction of the plot. Interestingly, despite ByteDance’s expertise in AI, the company did not develop the underlying large language models (LLMs) powering these apps. Instead, the apps rely on OpenAI’s GPT technology, accessed via a license from Microsoft Azure.

3. Anthropic

SB Score: 748

Location: San Francisco, United States

Anthropic, co-founded by former OpenAI executives, has gained significant recognition for its focus on AI safety and ethical development of large-scale models. One of its flagship products is Claude, a conversational AI model designed to prioritize safety and transparency. The company’s strong emphasis on building AI systems that are aligned with human values sets it apart in a competitive market. With its advanced research and thoughtful approach to AI risks, Anthropic is positioning itself as a leader in responsible AI development.

4. Hugging Face

SB Score: 732

Location: New York, United States

Hugging Face started as a chatbot company but evolved into a major open-source machine learning platform, providing tools that democratize access to AI models. Its popular “Transformers” library, used in a variety of NLP tasks, has positioned it as a leader in open AI development. Hugging Face’s unique approach to community-driven development has been a key driver in its growth and its status as the “GitHub of machine learning”.

5. Gong

SB Score: 689

Location: Palo Alto, United States

Gong is an AI-driven sales platform that transforms revenue growth by recording, transcribing, and analyzing sales calls to enhance sales effectiveness across teams. Its generative AI models distinguish themselves from standard systems by categorizing vast amounts of deal-specific data, such as customer objections, and interpreting the context and intent of conversations. This specialized capability allows Gong’s models to deliver highly accurate, relevant insights tailored to the unique needs of sales teams. By leveraging these insights, Gong empowers sales professionals to optimize their strategies, driving more precise decision-making and ultimately improving overall sales performance.

6. Outreach

SB Score: 684

Location: Seattle, United States

Outreach focuses on enhancing sales processes through AI-driven automation. Like Gong, Outreach leverages artificial intelligence to improve the effectiveness of sales teams by streamlining communication workflows and boosting performance. Its AI capabilities extend to automating tasks such as campaign creation, email personalization, and optimizing outreach efforts to generate more responses. The platform’s intelligent insights help sales teams identify the most effective strategies, leading to faster growth and improved sales outcomes.

7. ElevenLabs

SB Score: 669

Location: Brooklyn, United States

ElevenLabs, known for its AI-driven voice cloning technology, allows creators, enterprises, and others to replicate voices in multiple languages. The company is expanding its offerings with the upcoming launch of a dubbing studio and a voice library marketplace. These new products will enable users to seamlessly dub content into different languages with AI-generated voices and access a broad selection of voices for various creative and professional purposes.

8. Anduril

SB Score: 669

Location: Irvine, United States

Anduril is a defense technology company, but recently started to integrate AI and autonomous systems to its military applications. Its growth has been fueled by securing government contracts and developing innovative defense technologies such as autonomous drones and advanced surveillance systems. Recently, Anduril introduced Pulsar, an AI-enabled system designed to counter sophisticated electromagnetic threats. Pulsar can jam small to medium-sized drones and provide accurate geolocation for friendly forces. The system uses radio frequency machine learning to rapidly identify and neutralize potential threats, transmitting data to other systems to speed up response times. Anduril’s continuous focus on national security innovation and cutting-edge defense solutions has driven its rapid growth and elevated its status as a major player in defense technology.

9. Dataiku

SB Score: 654

Location: Paris, France

Dataiku is an AI and data science platform that enables organizations to design, deploy, and manage AI applications at scale. The platform is tailored for data scientists, analysts, and business teams to collaborate on building predictive models and machine learning pipelines. With a focus on democratizing data science, Dataiku’s platform integrates data preparation, machine learning, and model deployment into a single tool, helping businesses transition to AI-driven decision-making.

10. Megvii

SB Score: 651

Location: Beijing, China

Megvii, based in Beijing, is an AI technology company specializing in computer vision. It is best known for its facial recognition technology, which is widely used in China for security, finance, and urban management applications. Megvii’s flagship platform, Face++, powers a range of AI-driven products including surveillance systems, identity verification, and smart city solutions. The company’s AI technology is powered by deep learning algorithms and has been a key player in China’s “smart city” initiatives, where AI is used to monitor and manage large urban environments.