From releasing new AI models to securing US defense contracts to developing autonomous systems, the top 50 AI startups of 2024 are focused on a variety of fields. Despite their different areas of focus, one thing connects nearly a quarter of them: a CEO who lists Google ( GOOGL ) as his former employer.
More than a dozen of this year’s top AI companies are helped by a former Google employee, according to a recent analysis from Writerbuddy, an online content writing platform. As of this October, 14 startups led by former Google employees have received a combined valuation of $71.6 billion and raised a total of $14.7 billion—representing 28 percent of the total funding of the world’s top 50 startups. (The list is taken from Forbes’ AI 50 list for 2024, which ranks companies based on the business promise, technological use of AI, etc.)
The most valuable AI startup led by a former Googler is Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor known for its Claude family of AI models. It was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, who was a senior research scientist at Google between 2015 and 2016. After raising $9.7 billion over the past three years, Amazon-backed Anthropic is reportedly eyeing a new fundraising round to raise its profile. at $40 billion.
Perplexity AI, too, was founded by a former Google researcher. The startup focused on AI search, recently valued at nine billion dollars, was founded in 2022 by its CEO Aravind Srinivas, who previously worked at Google and Google DeepMind between 2019 and 2021.
Mistral AI, a French startup valued at 6.2 billion dollars, is led by former Google researcher Arthur Mensch. And Canada’s Cohere, valued at $5.5 billion, is led by Aidan Gomez, who was also a Google researcher.
Google isn’t the only tech company to rebrand startup leaders. Of the 14 companies led by former Google employees, three CEOs also spend a lot of time at OpenAI.
Amodei worked at an AI company as vice president of research before leaving in 2020 to found Anthropic. Perplexity’s Srinivas worked as a research scientist for OpenAI between 2021 and 2022. David Luan, founder and CEO of AI company Adept who earlier this month jumped to lead Amazon’s (AMZN) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) efforts in San. Francisco, also worked at Google and OpenAI.
It’s no surprise that OpenAI is expected to end 2024 as the most funded AI company of the year. With a staggering $157 billion valuation, the Sam Altman-helmed company is miles ahead of the second largest AI company, Databricks, valued at $43 billion and led by Ali Ghodsi.
The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked a frenzy of AI investment. Last year, the top 50 AI companies were able to raise $20.7 billion, representing a 600 percent year-over-year increase. This year’s AI investment, which has reached $20.2 billion as of October, is already nearly equal to last year’s total, according to a report by Writerbuddy.
Money is pouring into companies focused on building AI infrastructure and models, a sector dominated by players like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere that accounted for two-thirds of the $52.8 billion raised by the top 50 AI startups this year. Data and analytics, an area that includes players like Databricks and Scale AI, has a share of more than 11 percent, while defense and security efforts attracted about 7 percent of funding. Some popular early AI fields include autonomous systems and robotics, generative AI, search tools, healthcare and biotech, and manufacturing software.
