AI 50 2021: America's Most Promising Artificial Intelligence Companies

Abstraction: Forbes annual ranking of 50 promising private North American AI companies

Key points:

• List compiled with Sequoia Capital and Meritech Capital; criteria require ML, NLP, or computer vision to be fundamental to operations; large-tech-incubated companies ineligible.
• 31 companies appeared for the first time; 7 qualified three years running; 13 are unicorns ($1B+) and 13 valued at $100M or less.
• 37 of 50 honorees are from the San Francisco Bay Area; pandemic accelerated AI adoption across sectors.
• Databricks reached $28B valuation and $425M ARR on the back of its "lakehouse" data platform.
• Scale AI (Alex Wang) valued at $7B, focused on data labeling for ML; Duolingo unicorn at $2.4B.
• Judge Andrew Ng highlighted customized enterprise data—not algorithms—as the key to unlocking business AI value.

Connections: Forbes · Sequoia Capital · Databricks · Scale AI · Duolingo · Machine Learning

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/04/26/ai-50-americas-most-promising-artificial-intelligence-companies/?sh=6fad89c477cf