Top 10 AI companies in the world: See who's winning the race between Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other tech giants

Indian Express

4 hours ago

Top 10 AI companies in the world Forbes: Artificial intelligence isn't slowing down, it is only growing bigger, bolder, and more embedded in the way modern businesses operate. More than two years after ChatGPT took the world by storm, AI remains a top priority for venture capitalists and tech leaders. But the conversation has shifted: instead of only racing to build the most powerful AI models, many startups are focusing on real-world applications—tools that save time, cut repetitive work, and make tasks easier across sectors like engineering, healthcare, legal services, and sales.
This shift is reflected in Forbes' seventh annual AI 50 list, created in partnership with Sequoia and Meritech Capital, which spotlights the most promising privately-owned AI companies worldwide—from established giants to rising newcomers..
Newcomers to the list include Anysphere—better known as Cursor—a three-year-old AI coding assistant valued at $2.5 billion and generating over $100 million in annual revenue. Speak, an AI-powered language tutoring app worth $1 billion, serves around 10 million learners of English and Spanish. Massachusetts-based OpenEvidence, another unicorn, offers an AI-driven medical search tool that distils complex information into concise summaries for doctors.
While rising startups are making waves, AI model-building heavyweights still dominate the top tier. OpenAI and Anthropic—two of the sector's most well-funded players—have raised a combined $81 billion, more than half of the total $142.45 billion secured by this year's AI 50 companies. But the race is intensifying: Elon Musk's xAI has raised $12.1 billion; former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is launching Thinking Machine Labs, aiming for $1 billion at a $9 billion valuation; and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, dubbed the 'godmother of AI,' has entered the fray with World Labs, backed by $291.5 million to build systems that interpret physical spaces. On the enterprise side, Writer has secured $326 million to develop proprietary AI models for corporate tasks like drafting marketing blogs or combing through large document archives.
Powering all of these AI dreams are the often-overlooked infrastructure providers. AI companies need huge amounts of computing power, expensive chips, and energy-intensive data centers to train and run their systems. That demand has boosted companies like Crusoe ($2.8 billion valuation), Lambda ($2.5 billion), and Together AI ($3.3 billion), all working to supply the raw computing power AI development requires.
Some startups are proving that AI model training doesn't have to burn through endless amounts of money. Chinese company DeepSeek is an example, it's shown that building powerful models can be done more cost-efficiently. While it isn't on the AI 50 list this year due to unclear details about its funding, revenue, and operations, DeepSeek represents a growing group of Chinese AI companies that are becoming serious contenders in the global AI race.
From billion-dollar app startups to massive model-makers and the infrastructure that powers them, AI's ecosystem has never been more varied, or more competitive. And if this year's AI 50 list is anything to go by, the race is shifting from who can build the biggest model to who can build the most useful AI for real-world needs.
Source: Forbes