AI companies and labs
263 companies assessed. 204 of them, 77.6%, sit in the two least protected bands, against 53.3% across all 10,525 companies assessed.
The picture
The split runs along one line: companies selling a thin layer on top of general models are getting swallowed, while companies that own hard infrastructure, physical hardware, or regulated data are holding. Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Waymo, Applied Intuition, and Palantir sit on real moats, mostly chips, self-driving miles, simulation data, or government contracts that a chatbot can't replicate. Meanwhile a long tail of chatbot vendors, avatar makers, prompt-testing tools, and Chinese vision/voice firms are being absorbed, acquihired, or driven to zero by the same three or four foundation model labs and hyperscalers shipping the same feature natively. Humanloop, Rewind AI, Covariant, and Phind already shut down or got folded into bigger players. The deciding dynamic is whether a company's value lives above the model layer (in which case it's temporary) or below/around it (chips, robots, physical infrastructure, exclusive data), which tends to survive the next model upgrade instead of getting erased by it.
All 263 companies, most protected first
| Company | Standing |
|---|---|
| Applied Intuition Makes simulation and AI software that carmakers and defense agencies use to build and test autonomy | Hard to displace |
| Dataiku Enterprise platform letting big companies build and govern AI and data pipelines in one place | Hard to displace |
| Abnormal Security AI-native platform that stops email and cloud attacks using behavioral detection | Defensible for now |
| Advanced Micro Devices Chipmaker selling CPUs and GPUs, the main alternative to Nvidia in AI accelerators | Defensible for now |
| Broadcom Broadcom makes custom AI chips for hyperscalers and sells VMware software to enterprises | Defensible for now |
| Clay Clay is an AI-driven platform that enriches sales data and automates outreach across 150+ providers | Defensible for now |
| Cognigy German conversational AI platform for customer service, now NiCE Cognigy | Defensible for now |
| FPT Smart Cloud FPT Smart Cloud runs Vietnam's sovereign GPU cloud, data centers, and AI platform for FPT Corp | Defensible for now |
| Gogolook Taiwan's anti-scam app maker, Whoscall, built on caller ID and scam databases | Defensible for now |
| Gong AI platform that records sales calls and tells reps what to do next | Defensible for now |
| Halter Halter builds solar GPS collars that herd and fence cattle by app, no wires needed | Defensible for now |
| HeyGen AI platform that turns text and a photo into talking avatar marketing videos | Defensible for now |
| LG AI Research LG Group's in-house AI lab building EXAONE models for sovereign, enterprise use | Defensible for now |
| Marvell Technology Marvell designs custom AI chips and networking silicon for the biggest cloud data centers | Defensible for now |
| Moloco AI/ML platform for mobile app install ads, retail media, and CTV programmatic buying | Defensible for now |
| Moveworks AI IT support agent that resolves employee tickets, now owned by ServiceNow | Defensible for now |
| Nvidia Nvidia makes the GPUs and software stack that train and run most AI models today | Defensible for now |
| OpenEvidence Free, ad-supported AI clinical search tool used by verified physicians for point-of-care answers | Defensible for now |
| Palantir Technologies Data analytics and AI operations software for governments and large companies | Defensible for now |
| PathAI AI pathology company selling image analysis tools to labs and drug researchers | Defensible for now |
| Protect AI Former AI security startup, now Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS product line since July 2025 | Defensible for now |
| Shield AI Builds AI autonomy software and drones for military aircraft. | Defensible for now |
| Surge AI Surge AI pays experts to label and grade AI training data for frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic | Defensible for now |
| Synthesia Enterprise AI video platform making training and marketing videos with digital avatars | Defensible for now |
| Waymo Waymo runs paid robotaxi rides in 10+ US cities, owned by Alphabet | Defensible for now |
| Weights & Biases ML experiment tracking and management platform, now a CoreWeave subsidiary | Defensible for now |
| 01.AI Chinese AI lab that pivoted from building foundation models to deploying them | Protection under test |
| Aicadium Singapore AI unit fully owned by Temasek, now pushing AI advisory and governance work | Protection under test |
| Aisera AI service management vendor now folded into Automation Anywhere after a 2025 acquisition | Protection under test |
| Aleph Alpha German AI lab building sovereign foundation models, now being absorbed into Cohere at a fraction of its old value | Protection under test |
| Anthropic Anthropic builds the Claude AI models and Claude Code, sold mostly to enterprises. | Protection under test |
| Augment Code AI coding assistant that indexes large enterprise codebases for context-aware code generation | Protection under test |
| BigBear.ai AI-driven analytics and computer vision for defense, intelligence, and government agencies | Protection under test |
| Crusoe Energy Builds gas and clean power data centers and cloud compute for AI training workloads | Protection under test |
| D-ID Israeli startup making AI talking-head avatars and video agents for businesses | Protection under test |
| Darktrace AI-driven cybersecurity platform that detects threats using behavioral network models | Protection under test |
| DataRobot DataRobot builds enterprise tools for training, governing, and deploying machine learning and agentic AI models | Protection under test |
| Encord UK platform for labeling and managing training data for AI models | Protection under test |
| Galileo AI evaluation and observability platform, now a Cisco business unit inside Splunk | Protection under test |
| Gatik Gatik runs driverless middle-mile delivery trucks for Walmart, Kroger, and Tyson | Protection under test |
| Hippocratic AI AI voice agents that handle patient calls, intake, and follow-up for hospitals | Protection under test |
| iFlytek China's top voice AI and speech recognition company, backed by the state | Protection under test |
| Insilico Medicine AI platform that designs new drugs and licenses them to big pharma | Protection under test |
| Labelbox Human labeling and expert-review platform feeding AI labs' training data pipelines | Protection under test |
| Leonardo AI AI image and video creation platform for creators, owned by Canva since 2024 | Protection under test |
| Murf AI Murf AI makes text-to-speech and voice-cloning tools for enterprise video, e-learning, and marketing content. | Protection under test |
| Owkin Owkin runs an AI platform on hospital patient data to find drug biomarkers for pharma companies. | Protection under test |
| People.ai AI platform that tracks sales activity and revenue data inside Salesforce and other CRMs | Protection under test |
| Photoroom AI photo editing app that strips backgrounds and builds product photos for online sellers | Protection under test |
| Pinecone Pinecone runs a managed vector database for AI retrieval and agent memory. | Protection under test |
| Rokid Chinese maker of AI voice-assistant glasses wrapping borrowed AI models in commodity hardware | Protection under test |
| Sanctuary AI Canadian startup building humanoid robots and licensing its Physical AI control software | Protection under test |
| Stability AI London company behind Stable Diffusion, now leaning on licensed audio deals | Protection under test |
| Tabnine Israeli AI coding assistant selling on-prem, privacy-locked code completion to enterprises | Protection under test |
| Terminus Group Chinese AIoT firm building 'city brain' platforms and AI agents for government and industry | Protection under test |
| ViSenze Visual AI search and product-tagging tech for retailers, now folded into Rezolve Ai | Protection under test |
| Viz.ai AI platform that flags strokes and other emergencies from medical scans | Protection under test |
| Voiceflow Canadian platform for building and designing AI conversational agents | Protection under test |
| Xiaoice Beijing conversational AI and virtual human maker spun off from Microsoft China | Protection under test |
| 1X Technologies Norwegian startup building humanoid robots (EVE, NEO) for home and enterprise use | Losing its protection |
| 4Paradigm Chinese enterprise AI platform (Sage) selling on-prem machine learning to banks, SOEs, telecom | Losing its protection |
| Ada Ada builds AI agents that handle customer service chats for large companies | Losing its protection |
| Advance.ai Singapore identity verification and fraud-scoring platform serving ASEAN banks and fintechs | Losing its protection |
| Agility Robotics Maker of Digit, a bipedal humanoid robot for warehouse and logistics work | Losing its protection |
| AISpeech Chinese conversational AI firm selling in-car voice assistants and enterprise voice hardware | Losing its protection |
| Ambience Healthcare AI scribe that listens to doctor visits and writes the medical note for them | Losing its protection |
| Anyscale Anyscale sells managed infrastructure and support for Ray, the open source distributed compute framework for AI | Losing its protection |
| Anysphere Anysphere makes Cursor, an AI-first code editor forked from VS Code | Losing its protection |
| Appier AI-driven marketing and advertising software platform serving APAC brands and retailers | Losing its protection |
| Apptronik Apptronik builds the Apollo humanoid robot for warehouses and factories, backed by Google and Mercedes-Benz. | Losing its protection |
| Arize AI Arize AI builds tools that watch AI systems and flag when they screw up in production. | Losing its protection |
| AssemblyAI API company selling speech-to-text and audio intelligence to developers | Losing its protection |
| Aurora Innovation Aurora runs driverless self-driving trucks hauling freight on Texas highways | Losing its protection |
| AutoX Chinese robotaxi operator running driverless rides in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan. | Losing its protection |
| Baichuan AI Chinese LLM startup pivoting from general AI into medical AI hospital deployments | Losing its protection |
| Baidu Chinese search giant turning itself into an AI, cloud, and robotaxi company | Losing its protection |
| Baseten Baseten hosts and deploys AI models across multiple clouds for companies running inference at scale. | Losing its protection |
| BenevolentAI UK biotech using AI knowledge graphs to find new drug targets for pharma partners | Losing its protection |
| Black Forest Labs Startup behind FLUX, an image generation AI model licensed to Meta, Adobe, and Canva | Losing its protection |
| Bland AI Bland AI builds voice agents that make and take phone calls for enterprise customers | Losing its protection |
| Boost.ai Norwegian conversational AI platform helping banks and enterprises run customer service chatbots | Losing its protection |
| C3.ai Enterprise software maker that builds custom AI applications for oil, gas, defense, and industry | Losing its protection |
| Cedar Cedar builds AI-driven patient billing and payment software for hospitals and health systems | Losing its protection |
| Cerebras Systems Cerebras makes wafer-scale chips for fast AI training and inference, competing with Nvidia GPUs. | Losing its protection |
| Chai Discovery Chai Discovery builds AI models that design proteins and antibodies for drug hunters | Losing its protection |
| Character.AI Character.AI lets people chat and roleplay with AI-generated characters and companions. | Losing its protection |
| Chroma Open-source database that stores and searches AI embeddings for retrieval | Losing its protection |
| Clari Clari runs an AI revenue-forecasting platform for sales teams, now merged with Salesloft | Losing its protection |
| Codeium Codeium, now folded into Cognition, makes AI coding tools once branded Windsurf, now Devin Desktop | Losing its protection |
| Cohere Canadian AI lab selling enterprise language models with private, on-prem deployment | Losing its protection |
| Comet ML Comet ML makes Opik, a tool for tracking and testing AI models and agents in production | Losing its protection |
| Consensus AI search engine that answers research questions using citations from scientific papers | Losing its protection |
| Copy.ai AI go to market content tool now folded into Fullcast's RevOps roll up | Losing its protection |
| CoreWeave CoreWeave rents Nvidia GPU cloud capacity to AI labs and hyperscalers on long-term contracts | Losing its protection |
| Corti AI co-pilot that helps clinicians document patient visits in real time. | Losing its protection |
| Cradle Cradle sells AI software that designs and optimizes proteins for pharma R&D teams | Losing its protection |
| Cresta Cresta sells AI tools that help contact center agents talk to customers better | Losing its protection |
| CrewAI Open source framework for building and orchestrating multi-agent AI workflows | Losing its protection |
| Decagon AI AI agent platform that automates enterprise customer support conversations | Losing its protection |
| DeepBrain AI South Korean maker of AI avatar and video-generation software for businesses | Losing its protection |
| Deepgram Deepgram sells speech-to-text and voice-agent APIs to enterprises for calls, telco, and CX. | Losing its protection |
| DeepL German AI translation company for text, voice, and enterprise document workflows | Losing its protection |
| DeepSeek Chinese lab building open-weight frontier AI models, rivaling Western labs on cost. | Losing its protection |
| Descript Descript makes text-based video and audio editing software with AI transcription and dubbing tools | Losing its protection |
| Diligent Robotics Maker of Moxi, an AI robot that delivers supplies and meds inside hospitals, now owned by Serve Robotics | Losing its protection |
| Domino Data Lab Enterprise platform for governed, compliant data science and machine learning workflows | Losing its protection |
| Eightfold AI AI system that screens, ranks, and plans hiring for large employers | Losing its protection |
| Einride Swedish maker of electric, autonomous freight trucks and software for enterprise fleets | Losing its protection |
| ElevenLabs Makes AI voice generation and voice agent tools for enterprise customer service. | Losing its protection |
| Elicit Elicit builds an AI assistant that helps researchers find, screen, and extract data from academic papers | Losing its protection |
| Emergence AI Startup selling multi-agent orchestration software built on top of frontier AI models | Losing its protection |
| Enveda Biosciences Clinical-stage biotech using AI to mine plant chemistry for new drugs, no product revenue yet | Losing its protection |
| Exa Exa builds a neural search engine and index made for AI models to query, not humans | Losing its protection |
| ExaWizards Japanese firm that wires government agencies and banks into outside AI models, not its own | Losing its protection |
| Fiddler AI Fiddler AI monitors and explains AI models for banks, insurers, and the Pentagon | Losing its protection |
| Figure AI Maker of humanoid robots (Figure 02/03) deployed at BMW factories, using in-house Helix AI models | Losing its protection |
| Fireworks AI Fireworks AI runs a managed fast inference platform for open source and custom LLMs | Losing its protection |
| Forethought AI customer support automation vendor, acquired by Zendesk in 2026 | Losing its protection |
| Formation Bio Asset-licensing biotech that uses AI to speed drug development from license to trial | Losing its protection |
| Fractal Analytics Mumbai-based AI and analytics consulting firm, newly public, betting on agentic products | Losing its protection |
| Freenome Blood test maker chasing FDA approval for colorectal cancer screening, pre-revenue after 12 years | Losing its protection |
| Gamma Gamma makes an AI tool that turns prompts into slide decks, docs, and web pages | Losing its protection |
| Generate Biomedicines Clinical-stage biotech using generative AI to design new proteins and drugs | Losing its protection |
| Ginkgo Bioworks Sells AI-run lab automation and biological data to drug and industrial firms | Losing its protection |
| Grammarly AI writing assistant, now rebranding as Superhuman Platform for broader work tools | Losing its protection |
| H2O.ai Open-source AI/ML platform selling AutoML and agentic AI to regulated enterprises and governments | Losing its protection |
| Harrison.ai Makes AI that reads X-rays, CT scans and pathology slides for hospitals worldwide | Losing its protection |
| Hebbia AI research agent for finance, used by 30-40% of top 50 asset managers to query documents | Losing its protection |
| HiddenLayer HiddenLayer sells security tools that detect attacks on AI models and machine learning systems | Losing its protection |
| Horizon Robotics Chinese chip and software maker for self-driving cars, listed as HKEX 9660 | Losing its protection |
| Hume AI Hume AI builds emotion-aware voice AI and now sells emotion data to AI labs | Losing its protection |
| Hyperscience Software that reads and processes documents for government agencies and big regulated companies | Losing its protection |
| Iambic Therapeutics AI-native biotech that designs small molecules and runs its own oncology trials | Losing its protection |
| Insitro AI drug discovery company using genomics and cell data to find new medicines | Losing its protection |
| Instabase Instabase automates document data extraction for banks, insurers, and lenders using AI | Losing its protection |
| Ironclad AI-native contract management software used by roughly 1,000 companies to draft, sign, and track deals | Losing its protection |
| Isomorphic Labs AI drug discovery lab spun out of DeepMind, designing medicines with AlphaFold-descended models | Losing its protection |
| Jasper AI Jasper AI builds AI writing tools for marketing teams, now pivoting to enterprise brand governance | Losing its protection |
| Kodiak AI Kodiak AI builds self-driving software for freight trucks, running driverless routes for paying customers | Losing its protection |
| Komodo Health Health data company mapping 330M+ patient journeys for AI-driven analytics and research | Losing its protection |
| Kore.ai Kore.ai builds enterprise conversational AI and agent orchestration software for large customer service operations | Losing its protection |
| Krea AI Krea AI makes real-time AI tools for image, video, and 3D creation | Losing its protection |
| Kyutai French nonprofit lab building open-source voice, audio, and world-model AI | Losing its protection |
| Lambda Lambda rents NVIDIA GPU clusters to AI labs and enterprises as a cloud alternative to hyperscalers | Losing its protection |
| LangChain Open source framework and LangSmith platform for building and monitoring LLM agents | Losing its protection |
| Lindy AI No-code platform for building AI agents that automate business workflows | Losing its protection |
| Liquid AI MIT spinout building efficient non-transformer AI models for phones, cars, and edge devices | Losing its protection |
| LlamaIndex Data framework and document parsing tools (LlamaParse) for building LLM apps | Losing its protection |
| Luma AI AI company making 3D and video generation models, embedded in Adobe Firefly | Losing its protection |
| Luminance UK maker of AI software that reads, reviews, and negotiates legal contracts | Losing its protection |
| Lunit Lunit makes AI that reads mammograms and scans to flag cancer for radiologists. | Losing its protection |
| Mercor Mercor runs a marketplace that supplies AI labs with human-labeled training and RL data | Losing its protection |
| Midjourney Self-funded AI image generator with a paid-only Discord community of millions | Losing its protection |
| MiniMax Chinese AI lab building foundation models and consumer apps like Hailuo and Talkie | Losing its protection |
| Mistral AI French lab building open-weight AI models sold as Europe's sovereign alternative to US AI | Losing its protection |
| Modal Labs Serverless cloud that runs AI code and GPU jobs for developers and agents | Losing its protection |
| Momenta Momenta licenses self-driving and ADAS software to automakers instead of building its own cars | Losing its protection |
| Moonshot AI Chinese AI lab that builds the Kimi chatbot and open Kimi K series models | Losing its protection |
| Moore Threads Chinese GPU maker building AI chips to fill the gap left by Nvidia export bans | Losing its protection |
| Nabla AI copilot that turns doctor-patient visits into clinical notes automatically | Losing its protection |
| Nebius Group Rents Nvidia GPU capacity and cloud infrastructure to AI labs and big tech customers | Losing its protection |
| NetEase Youdao Chinese dictionary and AI learning app maker, majority owned by NetEase | Losing its protection |
| Nuro Nuro licenses its self driving software to automakers and Uber instead of running its own robotaxis | Losing its protection |
| Observe.AI AI platform that analyzes contact center calls for quality and coaching insights | Losing its protection |
| OpenAI OpenAI makes ChatGPT and GPT models, the leading AI chatbot and API platform for consumers and businesses | Losing its protection |
| Otter.ai AI meeting transcription and notetaker app used by 86% of Fortune 500 | Losing its protection |
| Perplexity AI AI answer engine that searches the web and gives sourced answers instead of links | Losing its protection |
| Physical Intelligence Startup building foundation AI models that act as control brains for robots | Losing its protection |
| PKSHA Technology Japanese AI vendor building chatbots and workflow automation for enterprise contact centers | Losing its protection |
| PolyAI UK startup selling voice AI agents that handle customer service phone calls for big brands | Losing its protection |
| Pony.ai Chinese robotaxi operator running self-driving cars, trucks, and tech licensing across China and abroad | Losing its protection |
| Poolside Poolside builds foundation AI models focused on software coding for enterprises and defense | Losing its protection |
| Preferred Networks Tokyo lab building PLaMo language models, deep learning chips, and robotics for Japanese industry | Losing its protection |
| Qdrant Qdrant makes an open-source vector database that helps AI apps search and retrieve data fast | Losing its protection |
| Rapyuta Robotics Cloud robotics company selling AMR warehouse automation hardware and software | Losing its protection |
| Rasa Open-source framework for building self-hosted, regulated-industry conversational AI agents | Losing its protection |
| Recursion Pharmaceuticals AI-driven drug discovery company using proprietary lab imaging data to find new medicines | Losing its protection |
| Regard AI that reads hospital records to find missed diagnoses and billable revenue for hospitals | Losing its protection |
| Reka AI Small Singapore lab building multimodal AI models, now pivoting into physical AI and robotics data | Losing its protection |
| Replicate API platform for running and hosting machine learning models, now owned by Cloudflare | Losing its protection |
| Retell AI Developer platform for building and running voice AI agents at scale | Losing its protection |
| Riiid Korean AI-tutoring company behind Santa TOEIC, an adaptive test-prep app for English learners | Losing its protection |
| Runway Runway makes AI video generation tools used by studios, brands, and creators | Losing its protection |
| Safe Superintelligence Inc. A secretive lab racing to build superintelligence with no product or revenue yet | Losing its protection |
| Sakana AI Japan-based AI lab building sovereign models plus Fugu, a multi-model orchestration layer | Losing its protection |
| SambaNova Systems SambaNova builds AI inference chips and full systems for banks, telcos, and governments needing on-prem speed. | Losing its protection |
| Sendbird Sendbird sells chat and messaging APIs, now pivoting to AI customer-service agents | Losing its protection |
| SenseTime Chinese computer vision and generative AI company, state-linked, listed in Hong Kong | Losing its protection |
| Signzy Indian AI identity verification and KYC compliance platform for banks and fintechs | Losing its protection |
| Skild AI Skild AI builds a general purpose foundation model brain for robots across industrial and warehouse tasks | Losing its protection |
| SmartMore Shenzhen/HK spinoff selling AI-powered machine-vision systems for factory defect detection | Losing its protection |
| Snorkel AI Snorkel AI builds data labeling and training tools for enterprise and frontier AI models | Losing its protection |
| SoundHound AI Voice AI platform selling automotive, enterprise, and drive-thru conversational assistants | Losing its protection |
| Sourcegraph Sourcegraph builds enterprise code search and, now, a retrieval layer for AI coding agents | Losing its protection |
| Speechify Speechify makes an AI app that reads text aloud and turns text into voice, used by 60M+ people | Losing its protection |
| Spellbook AI copilot that drafts, reviews, and redlines contracts for corporate lawyers | Losing its protection |
| Squirrel AI Learning Chinese company selling AI adaptive-tutoring software and hardware to schools | Losing its protection |
| StackBlitz (Bolt.new) Bolt.new lets anyone build and deploy full-stack apps by chatting with AI in the browser. | Losing its protection |
| StepFun Chinese foundation-model maker embedding AI into phones, cars, and agent platforms | Losing its protection |
| Suki AI Suki makes an AI voice assistant that writes clinical notes for doctors in real time | Losing its protection |
| Suno Suno makes AI-generated songs from text prompts, with 2M paying subscribers | Losing its protection |
| Superb AI Korean data labeling and MLOps platform pivoting to its own vision AI models | Losing its protection |
| Synthflow AI No-code platform for building AI voice agents that handle business calls | Losing its protection |
| Tavus Tavus builds real time AI video avatars that talk back to users with sub second latency | Losing its protection |
| Tempus AI Tempus AI runs genomic testing labs and sells AI tools plus data licenses to drugmakers | Losing its protection |
| Thinking Machines Lab AI lab building frontier models and fine-tuning tools like Tinker, founded by Mira Murati | Losing its protection |
| Trax Computer-vision platform that scans store shelves to track CPG product placement and stock | Losing its protection |
| UBTech Robotics Chinese maker of Walker S humanoid robots sold to factories and retailers | Losing its protection |
| UiPath UiPath sells software robots and AI agents that automate repetitive office work for large companies | Losing its protection |
| Unisound Chinese speech AI vendor selling large-model tools to hospitals and insurers | Losing its protection |
| Upstage Korean startup building sovereign LLMs and document AI tools for regulated enterprise and public-sector use | Losing its protection |
| Vapi Vapi builds developer infrastructure for deploying voice AI phone agents at scale | Losing its protection |
| Vast.ai Vast.ai runs a marketplace where anyone rents out spare GPUs to AI developers at low prices | Losing its protection |
| Vectra AI Vectra AI sells AI-driven network detection and response software to enterprise security teams | Losing its protection |
| Waabi Waabi builds AI driving software for self-driving trucks and, now, robotaxis, using simulation instead of road miles. | Losing its protection |
| Warp Warp makes an AI-powered terminal app that developers use to code and run commands | Losing its protection |
| Wayve UK startup building AI software that lets cars drive themselves, sold to automakers | Losing its protection |
| Weaviate Open-source vector database for AI search and retrieval, based in the Netherlands. | Losing its protection |
| World Labs Startup building AI world models that generate explorable 3D scenes, led by Fei-Fei Li | Losing its protection |
| Writer Enterprise generative AI platform for writing, agents, and workflow automation | Losing its protection |
| Wrtn Technologies Seoul consumer AI app maker behind Crack and Kyarapu chatbots, built on other labs' models | Losing its protection |
| xAI Elon Musk's AI lab, now folded into SpaceX as SpaceXAI, builds the Grok chatbot | Losing its protection |
| Xaira Therapeutics AI-driven biotech using large-scale cell data to design new drugs, still pre-revenue | Losing its protection |
| You.com AI search engine and API provider powering web search inside DuckDuckGo, Amazon, and Databricks | Losing its protection |
| Yuanfudao Chinese K-12 AI learning hardware and app maker, pivoted from banned tutoring business | Losing its protection |
| Zhipu AI Chinese foundation-model lab making GLM AI models, listed in Hong Kong since Jan 2026 | Losing its protection |
| Zhiyuan Robotics (AgiBot) Shanghai startup building humanoid robots for factories, logistics, and homes | Losing its protection |
| Zilliz Zilliz makes Milvus, the open-source vector database powering AI search at scale | Losing its protection |
| Zoox Amazon-owned robotaxi company building purpose-built self-driving vehicles for paid rides | Losing its protection |
| 11x 11x makes AI sales agents ("digital workers") that prospect and message leads for sales teams | Little protection left |
| Adept AI Small enterprise AI agent startup automating business workflows after Amazon absorbed its founders and tech | Little protection left |
| AI21 Labs Israeli AI lab that dropped its own foundation models to sell an orchestration layer, Maestro | Little protection left |
| CloudWalk Technology Chinese facial-recognition and AI vision vendor selling to banks and public security | Little protection left |
| Contextual AI Enterprise RAG startup that built accuracy tools for grounding AI answers in company data | Little protection left |
| Covariant Robotics AI startup left as a shell after Amazon hired its founders and licensed its tech in 2024 | Little protection left |
| DeepGlint Chinese computer-vision firm selling face and video recognition to police and banks | Little protection left |
| DoNotPay AI chatbot that drafts consumer dispute letters and cancellation scripts | Little protection left |
| Fixie AI Seed-funded startup selling a speech-native voice AI model and API to developers | Little protection left |
| Humanloop LLM prompt evaluation and testing platform for enterprise AI teams, now defunct as a company | Little protection left |
| Ideogram AI image generator startup known for rendering readable text inside images | Little protection left |
| Imbue Imbue is a small AI research lab building agent tools, including the free Sculptor coding UI | Little protection left |
| Inflection AI Small enterprise-AI vendor rebuilt after Microsoft hired its founders and staff | Little protection left |
| Krutrim Indian AI startup that dropped its chatbot, LLM, and chips to sell cloud infrastructure | Little protection left |
| LivePerson LivePerson sells conversational AI and chat software for enterprise customer service. | Little protection left |
| Mad Street Den AI visual-search and product-tagging startup, absorbed by M2P Fintech in 2025. | Little protection left |
| Magic.dev Magic.dev is a startup building an AI coding agent with long context, still unreleased after four years | Little protection left |
| Manus AI Manus AI builds a viral AI agent that plans and executes tasks using Claude and Qwen underneath | Little protection left |
| Megvii Chinese computer vision firm behind Face++ facial recognition tech | Little protection left |
| Mobvoi Mobvoi makes AI smartwatches, earbuds, and the TicNote agentic voice recorder | Little protection left |
| MultiOn Early-stage startup building an AI agent that browses the web and clicks buttons for you | Little protection left |
| Phind AI search engine built for developers, now shut down as of January 2026 | Little protection left |
| Pika Consumer app that generates short AI videos from text prompts | Little protection left |
| Rabbit Inc. Maker of the R1 AI companion device, now routing tasks to outside AI agents | Little protection left |
| Relevance AI No-code platform for building and running teams of AI agents | Little protection left |
| Rewind AI Personal AI memory app that recorded and searched your digital activity, now defunct | Little protection left |
| Robin AI UK AI contract review platform, now dismantled after failed sale and staff exodus | Little protection left |
| Soul Machines NZ maker of animated AI avatar 'digital humans' for enterprise customer service and branding | Little protection left |
| Synthesis AI Made synthetic data for training computer vision AI models | Little protection left |
| Udio Udio makes AI-generated songs from text prompts, licensed with Universal Music | Little protection left |
| Vellum AI Vellum AI builds tools for companies to develop and test LLM-based apps | Little protection left |
| Xiaoi Robot Chinese vendor of enterprise chatbots, IVR, and Q&A knowledge-base AI tools | Little protection left |
| Yellow.ai Yellow.ai builds enterprise chatbots and voice agents for customer service automation | Little protection left |
| Yitu Technology Chinese AI vision and healthcare-imaging firm known for facial recognition tech | Little protection left |
Questions people ask
- Which AI startups have already shut down or been absorbed?
- Phind shut down in January 2026 after ChatGPT and Gemini absorbed its search niche, Humanloop's team was absorbed by Anthropic, Rewind AI was acquired and shut down by Meta, and Covariant became a shell after Amazon hired its founders in 2024.
- Is Palantir losing government contracts to competitors?
- Yes, Salesforce's Missionforce won a $5.6 billion Army contract in January 2026, breaching what had been considered Palantir's stronghold, though Palantir is still listed as defensible for now overall.
- Are Chinese AI companies struggling more than US ones?
- The data shows heavy pressure on Chinese chatbot, voice, and vision vendors like Xiaoi Robot, CloudWalk, Mobvoi, and Megvii, mostly because Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and iFlytek bundle cheaper models into the same market these smaller firms serve.
- What kind of AI companies are surviving the AI era?
- The strongest positions belong to companies with physical or infrastructure advantages, like Nvidia and Broadcom in chips, Waymo in self-driving miles, and Applied Intuition in simulation software, rather than companies whose product is just a wrapper around someone else's model.
- Why are AI wrapper startups failing?
- Companies like Humanloop, Contextual AI, and Rewind AI built tools on top of foundation models, and once OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft added the same features natively, there was no separate reason for customers to pay a startup for it.
- Which humanoid robot company is losing ground in China?
- UBTech Robotics is losing its protection, with AgiBot and Unitree outshipping it domestically and new July 2026 Chinese rules already hitting its U1 and UWorld consumer product line.
What to watch
- More AI tooling or wrapper startups get quietly acquihired by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Meta rather than raising new funding rounds
- Chinese hyperscalers keep launching bundled AI platforms (like Agentar, DuMate, WorkBuddy, Qwen) aimed at enterprise and government contracts
- Hyperscalers announce new in-house AI chip generations (TPU, Trainium, Maia, MTIA) with expanded internal deployment
Head to head in this sector
AISpeech vs iFlytekiFlytek vs MobvoiMobvoi vs UnisoundRiiid vs Squirrel AI LearningBaidu vs Xiaoi RobotiFlytek vs Xiaoi RobotBaidu vs NetEase Youdao
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