AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, NVIDIA, and Meta are dominating the headlines in 2025. It feels like in the business and tech press, everything is about AI.
We know that ChatGPT dominates consumer mindshare for branding, and has been a runaway success since their November 2022 ChatGPT launch. Claude has been hot with developers using Claude Code, but gets very little consumer adoption when looking at the whole population.
Elon Musk has a vendetta against Sam Altman for, as he says it, turning the non-profit into a for-profit and effectively “stealing” ownership.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is aggressively poaching employees from OpenAI and other big labs, with some rumored pay packages worth up to $100 million or even billion-dollar offers.
Through all this hype and total narrative domination, some names can get lost in the shuffle. Most of us outside of tech and finance aren’t aware of CoreWeave, but they’ve grown fast as a key player this year and with their recent IPO.
To cut through some of the noise, we wanted to build our own ranking list of startups gaining traction.
We put our heads together and refined metrics on AI companies that have received lots of funding and are funded in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. This ranking sheds light on the hottest AI companies and allows for clear comparisons with similar funding and business models. It also helps unearth the power laws and their relationships to funding and company concentration in this space.
Top 25 AI Startups Ranking Table
Here’s the big kahuna. The master ranking table. It’s no surprise that OpenAI tops the list, but some may be surprised to see xAI and CoreWeave topping the charts.
We analyzed data from Crunchbase and Keywords Everywhere to uncover the top US AI companies with top investors from Silicon Valley.
| Ranking | Company | GFD Tech100 Final Score* | GFD Funding Score* | GFD Website Score* | GFD Branded Keyword Score* | Private or Public? |
| 1 | OpenAI | 100.0 | 99.6 | 75.6 | 62.7 | Private |
| 2 | Mercor | 98.4 | 97.7 | 68.2 | 69.0 | Private |
| 3 | Meta | 94.5 | 96.5 | 70.2 | 57.1 | Public |
| 4 | Anthropic | 93.6 | 96.2 | 64.4 | 60.7 | Private |
| 5 | Apple | 91.5 | 83.9 | 79.0 | 64.2 | Public |
| 6 | LMArena | 91.3 | 69.1 | 72.1 | 100.0 | Private |
| 7 | Intel | 89.0 | 93.7 | 67.2 | 48.6 | Public |
| 8 | Scale AI | 88.8 | 90.0 | 58.1 | 64.7 | Private |
| 9 | Perplexity | 88.8 | 81.4 | 74.4 | 65.3 | Private |
| 10 | CoreWeave | 88.6 | 87.9 | 62.4 | 63.9 | Public |
| 11 | Thinking Machines Lab | 88.0 | 82.4 | 63.2 | 72.0 | Private |
| 12 | Sesame | 87.9 | 91.0 | 60.4 | 57.4 | Private |
| 13 | OpenEvidence | 87.9 | 90.2 | 65.0 | 54.2 | Private |
| 14 | xAI | 87.8 | 89.0 | 67.0 | 54.4 | Private |
| 15 | Workday | 87.8 | 89.7 | 64.0 | 56.1 | Public |
| 16 | Vercel | 87.7 | 85.4 | 67.5 | 60.9 | Private |
| 17 | Supabase | 87.0 | 82.2 | 67.3 | 65.4 | Private |
| 18 | Databricks | 86.6 | 88.7 | 64.0 | 54.3 | Private |
| 19 | Fal | 85.9 | 89.3 | 62.7 | 52.1 | Private |
| 20 | LangChain | 85.7 | 87.6 | 62.2 | 55.5 | Private |
| 21 | Lila Sciences | 85.0 | 85.9 | 55.9 | 63.2 | Private |
| 22 | Sublime Security | 85.0 | 95.9 | 50.6 | 48.1 | Private |
| 23 | Grammarly | 83.6 | 79.0 | 71.5 | 56.9 | Private |
| 24 | Upstart | 83.3 | 82.5 | 63.9 | 56.6 | Public |
| 25 | Figure | 83.2 | 87.4 | 57.5 | 52.7 | Private |
*GFD’s Tech100 score is a final composite score of the Funding Score, Website Score, and the Branded Keyword score.
Key Takeaways:
- The three hottest AI firms in July 2025 are OpenAI, Meta, and Mercor due to the volume and freshness of their funding, the recent performance of their website, and the growth trends of their branded keyword.
Ranking the Top Startups by Funding Score
Funding is huge. This breakout highlights those firms that have raised the most venture capital rounds, ranked by a combination of date and volume. Note we are also including post-IPO raises as well. These are worth considering because they’re all part of the competitive system that all cybersecurity startups are competing in.
| Ranking | Company | Total Funding Amount | Most Recent Funding Amount | Last Funding Date | GFD Funding Score* | Private or Public? |
| 1 | OpenAI | $78.00B | $6.60B | 10/2/2025 | 99.6 | Private |
| 2 | Mercor | $484M | $350M | 10/27/2025 | 97.7 | Private |
| 3 | Meta | $54.61B | $26.00B | 8/8/2025 | 96.5 | Public |
| 4 | Anthropic | $33.74B | $13.00B | 9/2/2025 | 96.2 | Private |
| 5 | Sublime Security | $240M | $150M | 10/28/2025 | 95.9 | Private |
| 6 | Reflection.AI | $2.13B | $2.00B | 10/9/2025 | 94.3 | Private |
| 7 | Intel | $24.97B | $8.90B | 8/22/2025 | 93.7 | Public |
| 8 | Uniphore | $881M | $260M | 10/22/2025 | 92.7 | Private |
| 9 | Sesame | $308M | $250M | 10/21/2025 | 91.0 | Private |
| 10 | OpenEvidence | $517M | $200M | 10/20/2025 | 90.2 | Private |
| 11 | Cerebras Systems | $1.82B | $1.10B | 9/30/2025 | 90.1 | Private |
| 12 | Scale AI | $15.90B | $14.30B | 6/10/2025 | 90 | Private |
| 13 | Workday | $2.23B | $2.00B | 9/16/2025 | 89.7 | Public |
| 14 | Fal | $447M | $250M | 10/17/2025 | 89.3 | Private |
| 15 | xAI | $22.73B | $5.32B | 7/13/2025 | 89 | Private |
*GFD’s Funding Score captures funding volume and velocity by combing total funding with recent funding amount and recency.
Key Takeaways:
- When accounting for funding volume and freshness, OpenAI leads the industry as it is the AI company with the highest total funding and has just recently received a staggering funding amount of $6.6B.
- Mercor and Reflection.AI are two fast rising artificial intelligence companies that have recently received large funding amounts.
- Prominent companies like Anduril Industries and Meta have applied AI to their business models and remain hot in funding.
1. OpenAI
GFD Funding Score*: 99.6
Total Funding Amount: $78.00B
Most Recent Funding Amount: $6.60B
Days Since Last Funding: 30
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, OpenAI ranks #1 in funding. The company’s total funding is $78.00B and the last time they were funded was on October 2, 2025 for $6.60B. The last funding type was Secondary Market. The total amount of lead investors that OpenAI has is 10 and their top investors are: Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, TPG, Sequoia Capital, Citi.
2. Mercor
GFD Funding Score*: 97.7
Total Funding Amount: $484M
Most Recent Funding Amount: $350M
Days Since Last Funding: 5
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, Mercor ranks #2 in funding. The company’s total funding is $484M and the last time they were funded was on October 27, 2025 for $350M. The last funding type was Series C. The total amount of lead investors that Mercor has is 3 and their top investors are: Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Benchmark, Felicis, SignalRank.
3. Meta
GFD Funding Score*: 96.5
Total Funding Amount: $54.61B
Most Recent Funding Amount: $26.00B
Days Since Last Funding: 85
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, Meta ranks #3 in funding. The company’s total funding is $54.61B and the last time they were funded was on August 8, 2025 for $26.00B. The last funding type was Post-IPO Debt. The total amount of lead investors that Meta has is 14 and their top investors are: Accel, General Atlantic, Blue Owl, Founders Fund, TCV.
GFD Website Score Breakdown
Website traffic and traffic growth are important but don’t always line up perfectly with other attributes and events like funding. We were curious to see which of these companies saw the strongest website traffic and growth. Our website score captures the volume of recent website visits and combines it with the company’s website growth trends.
| Ranking | Company | Last Month Total Visits | Average Visits (6 Months) | Monthly Visit Growth | GFD Website Score* | Private or Public? |
| 1 | Oboe | 204K | 34K | 46875.81% | 100.0 | Private |
| 2 | 97.23B | 98.58B | -1.01% | 89.4 | Public | |
| 3 | Apple | 875.8M | 728.8M | 22.45% | 79.0 | Public |
| 4 | Strella | 108K | 34K | 2149.01% | 76.8 | Private |
| 5 | RAAPID INC | 61K | 13K | 2719.71% | 76.5 | Private |
| 6 | Brave | 518.3M | 463.6M | 0.95% | 76.4 | Private |
| 7 | OpenAI | 709.8M | 1.04B | -24.35% | 75.6 | Private |
| 8 | Perplexity | 194.4M | 160.8M | 9.84% | 74.4 | Private |
| 9 | Character.ai | 119.7M | 126.1M | -0.61% | 72.8 | Private |
| 10 | LMArena | 34.6M | 12.4M | 65.68% | 72.1 | Private |
| 11 | Salesforce | 73.1M | 74.3M | 3.19% | 71.8 | Public |
| 12 | Grammarly | 63.1M | 58.6M | 6.25% | 71.5 | Private |
| 13 | Vana | 269K | 68K | 678.51% | 71 | Private |
| 14 | Friend | 353K | 82K | 613.04% | 70.9 | Private |
| 15 | Miro | 35.1M | 32.1M | 14.25% | 70.6 | Private |
*GFD’s Website Score captures the volume of recent website visits and combines it with the company’s website growth trends.
Key Takeaways:
- Oboe is the number 1 ranked company for Website ranking as seen an extreme increase in website visits in the past month.
- Applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Github have drawn in large amounts of users, granting them second and third place in the website ranking.
1. Oboe
GFD Website Score*: 100
Last Month’s Total Visits: 204K
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 34K
Monthly Visit Growth: 46875.8%
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, Oboe ranks #1 in website traffic. Last month, the website saw 204K total visits and increased by 46875.8% from the month before that. The average visits over the past 6 months were 34K.
2. Google
GFD Website Score*: 89.4
Last Month’s Total Visits: 97.23B
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 98.58B
Monthly Visit Growth: -1.0%
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, Google ranks #2 in website traffic. Last month, the website saw 97.23B total visits and decreased by -1.0% from the month before that. The average visits over the past 6 months were 98.58B.
3. Apple
GFD Website Score*: 79
Last Month’s Total Visits: 875.8M
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 728.8M
Monthly Visit Growth: 22.5%
Out of our 1106 ranked Artificial Intelligence companies, Apple ranks #3 in website traffic. Last month, the website saw 875.8M total visits and increased by 22.5% from the month before that. The average visits over the past 6 months were 728.8M.
AI Startups with Strongest Branded Search Growth
A great way to measure brand growth is by analyzing keyword growth for the company across a period of time. We sourced Google Search keyword data for companies on the list and ranked by a score that accounted for total keyword search as well as search volume change over the last year.
| Ranking | Company | Total Keyword Search Volume | Average Monthly Search Volume Change (1 Year) | 1 Year Trend Positive or Negative? | GFD Company Keyword Ranking* | Private or Public |
| 1 | LMArena | 1.8M | 822200.00 | + | 100.0 | Private |
| 2 | Cluely | 91K | 33157.76 | + | 86.2 | Private |
| 3 | Vercept | 4K | 1460.56 | + | 82.6 | Private |
| 4 | Abnormal AI | 3K | 1032.59 | + | 77.7 | Private |
| 5 | JARS AI | 4K | 1177.83 | + | 75.6 | Private |
| 6 | Prompt AI | 91K | 21441.96 | + | 74.2 | Private |
| 7 | Scrunch AI | 2K | 504.69 | + | 72.7 | Private |
| 8 | Thinking Machines Lab | 33K | 7863.11 | + | 72.0 | Private |
| 9 | Bedrock Robotics | 2K | 479.79 | + | 71.3 | Private |
| 10 | Rosebud AI | 27K | 6136.01 | + | 70.5 | Private |
| 11 | Wisdom AI | 5K | 1418.18 | + | 70.4 | Private |
| 12 | OpenRouter | 246K | 42430.07 | + | 70 | Private |
| 13 | Mercor | 74K | 13946.15 | + | 69 | Private |
| 14 | Imbue | 165K | 28159.09 | + | 68.9 | Private |
| 15 | Augment Code | 50K | 9546.5 | + | 68.5 | Private |
*GFD’s Branded Keyword Ranking is a metric that combines monthly branded keyword search volume with a 1-year linear trend that is observed weekly and adjusted by search volume.
Key Takeaways:
- Google’s branded keyword dominates as it was searched over 400M times in July 2025. Despite having a negative search trend over the course of a year, it still remains dominant at number one.
- Some companies with fast-rising branded keyword searches are Mercor, Prompt AI, and Open Router, each with growing searches in 2025.
1. LMArena
GFD Branded Keyword Score*: 100
Total Keyword Search Volume: 1.8M
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: 822200
Out of our 1106 ranked artificial intelligence companies, LMArena ranks #1 in branded keyword searches. Last month, their total branded keyword search volume was 1.8M. Over the course of the last year, the average monthly change for their branded keyword search volume was 822200, indicating an increase in their 1-year trend.
2. Cluely
GFD Branded Keyword Score*: 86.2
Total Keyword Search Volume: 91K
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: 33157.76
Out of our 1106 ranked artificial intelligence companies, Cluely ranks #2 in branded keyword searches. Last month, their total branded keyword search volume was 91K. Over the course of the last year, the average monthly change for their branded keyword search volume was 33157.76, indicating an increase in their 1-year trend.
3. Vercept
GFD Branded Keyword Score*: 82.6
Total Keyword Search Volume: 4K
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: 1460.56
Out of our 1106 ranked artificial intelligence companies, Vercept ranks #3 in branded keyword searches. Last month, their total branded keyword search volume was 4K. Over the course of the last year, the average monthly change for their branded keyword search volume was 1460.56, indicating an increase in their 1-year trend.
Methodology and Sources
- Methodology: We collected data for 10k+ companies from Crunchbase and aggregated it into a set of scores through the use of quantitative transformations and expertly curated weighted averages.
- Sources: Crunchbase and Keywords Everywhere
