Meet the 10 AI startup unicorns with tiny teams
The advent of AI has enabled startups to do more with less, prompting some founders to maintain extremely lean teams.
"We're going to see 10-person companies with billion-dollar valuations pretty soon," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in February 2024. "In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there's this betting pool for the first year there is a one-person billion-dollar company, which would've been unimaginable without AI. And now [it] will happen."
Some of AI's biggest names have built upon tiny teams, such as Anysphere, the maker of coding copilot Cursor, which grew from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in less than a year with fewer than 50 employees, per private market research platform Sacra.
As a general rule, companies hire more employees when their businesses grow. Small tech teams aren't entirely unheard of — Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion when the photo-sharing app only had 13 employees — but they're exceedingly uncommon for startup unicorns.
Now, the venture ecosystem is powering a new generation of billion-dollar companies, made so efficient with AI that they only need a handful of employees.
Business Insider compiled a list of the highest-valued AI startups around the world with teams of 50 employees or fewer, according to PitchBook data.
PitchBook said its data only includes VC-backed companies with known employee counts and may not be the most up-to-date information. Business Insider independently contacted the companies listed and cross-referenced PitchBook's data with the number of employees associated with the startups' LinkedIn pages.
Here are the 12 AI startups valued at $1 billion+ with teams of 50 people or fewer.
Safe Superintelligence
Latest valuation: $32 billion, according to PitchBook
Employee count: 20, according to PitchBook
What it does: OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever launched Safe Superintelligence last June, a month after leaving the generative AI giant. Built by Sutskever, former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross, and ex-OpenAI technical staff member Daniel Levy, the research startup wants to create AI that surpasses human intelligence and is aligned with human values.
The Financial Times reported in April that Safe Superintelligence had raised $2 billion at a $32 billion valuation, bringing its total funding to $3 billion. Safe Superintelligence has never publicly disclosed its funding.
Safe Superintelligence declined to share its specific employee count for this story.
0G Labs
Latest valuation: $2 billion
Employee count: 40
What it does: 0G Labs, also known as Zero Gravity Labs, launched in 2023 to build a decentralized AI operating system to help AI applications run more easily on blockchain technology.
The startup says it's raised about $350 million to date, including a $40 million venture seed round in November, led by Hack VC and raised at a valuation cap as high as $2 billion, as well as $250 million in capital commitments that the startup can draw on once its 0G token is available on crypto exchanges.
Magic
Latest valuation: $1.58 billion, according to PitchBook
Employee count: 20, according to PitchBook
What it does: Magic is building AI models that can read massive amounts of code at once to help software developers easily write, review, and fix their code.
Magic said in August that it raised $320 million from investors, including Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as firms including Alphabet's CapitalG and Sequoia Capital, bringing Magic's total funding to $465 million since its 2022 founding.
Sakana AI
Latest valuation: $1.5 billion
Employee count: 28, according to PitchBook
What it does: Tokyo-based Sakana AI was launched in 2023 by a team of former Google researchers. Inspired by natural processes, like evolution and collective behavior, the startup is creating tech to combine smaller AI models to perform complex tasks. To date, it's raised roughly $244 million, including a $214 million Series A round in September led by New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, and Lux Capital.
Skild AI
Black Forest Labs
Accutar Biotech
Andalusia Labs
OpenEvidence
Latest valuation: $1 billion
Employee count: 22
What it does: Launched out of top health system Mayo Clinic's healthtech accelerator, OpenEvidence's AI copilot helps doctors quickly access and understand the latest medical research to support clinical decisions.
The startup, which provides its platform for free to healthcare professionals and medical students, has raised $127 million to date, including a $75 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital in February at a $1 billion valuation.
World Labs
Latest valuation: $1 billion, according to PitchBook
Employee count: 20, according to PitchBook
What it does: World Labs is building AI models to perceive, generate, and interact with 3D environments.
Its CEO, Fei-Fei Li, is often called the "godmother of AI" for her work in computer vision as the creator of ImageNet, a massive image database used for advances in deep learning.
World Labs launched out of stealth in September with $230 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures. The startup didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.
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