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.
| Company | GFD Tech100 Final Score* | Funding Score* | Website Score* | Branded Keyword Score* |
| OpenAI | 100.0 | 100.0 | 82.6 | 80.5 |
| xAI | 93.3 | 97.1 | 67.0 | 64.7 |
| CoreWeave | 92.9 | 96.0 | 50.2 | 70.8 |
| Scale AI | 90.1 | 95.1 | 55.8 | 59.9 |
| Anthropic | 87.5 | 89.9 | 65.2 | 65.5 |
| Meta | 86.6 | 85.5 | 69.3 | 73.1 |
| Databricks | 86.5 | 89.6 | 59.6 | 61.4 |
| Waymo | 83.3 | 85.5 | 53.4 | 65.7 |
| Perplexity | 82.7 | 78.1 | 74.3 | 86.1 |
| Anduril Industries | 82.7 | 87.1 | 51.3 | 55.2 |
| Grammarly | 81.0 | 78.9 | 70.6 | 75.4 |
| Cruise | 80.1 | 82.0 | 35.1 | 67.1 |
| Intel | 78.5 | 77.6 | 67.6 | 65.5 |
| Tempus | 78.3 | 81.9 | 46.2 | 55.2 |
| Anysphere | 75.0 | 78.1 | 49.2 | 55.5 |
| Harvey | 74.5 | 75.5 | 49.3 | 63.0 |
| Applied Intuition | 73.9 | 79.1 | 37.3 | 47.7 |
| Vanta | 73.7 | 77.4 | 50.2 | 51.0 |
| Cyera | 72.7 | 77.9 | 43.0 | 45.5 |
| Runway | 72.4 | 70.7 | 65.7 | 68.0 |
| Lambda | 72.2 | 74.4 | 45.1 | 57.8 |
| Rigetti Computing | 71.9 | 74.8 | 44.0 | 55.0 |
| Abridge | 71.5 | 75.4 | 48.7 | 49.1 |
| Snowflake | 71.4 | 70.4 | 59.7 | 62.8 |
| ClickHouse | 71.4 | 74.1 | 51.5 | 52.4 |
*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, xAI, and Coreweave 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.
| Company | Total Funding Amount | Most Recent Funding Amount | Last Funding Date | Funding Score* |
| OpenAI | $61.91B | $40.00B | 3/31/2025 | 100.0 |
| xAI | $22.41B | $5.00B | 7/13/2025 | 97.1 |
| CoreWeave | $17.18B | $1.75B | 7/22/2025 | 96.0 |
| Scale AI | $15.90B | $14.30B | 6/10/2025 | 95.1 |
| Anthropic | $17.24B | $2.50B | 5/16/2025 | 89.9 |
| Databricks | $20.81B | $5.25B | 1/13/2025 | 89.6 |
| Anduril Industries | $6.20B | $2.50B | 6/5/2025 | 87.1 |
| Waymo | $11.10B | $5.60B | 7/23/2024 | 85.5 |
| Meta | $25.61B | $1.00B | 11/12/2024 | 85.5 |
| Thinking Machines Lab | $2.01B | $2.00B | 6/20/2025 | 83.3 |
*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 recently this year received a staggering funding amount of $40B.
- In July 2025, xAI and Coreweave each received over $1B of funding.
- Prominent companies like Anduril Industries and Meta have applied AI to their business models and remain hot in funding.
1. OpenAI
Funding Score: 100.0
Total Funding Amount: $61.91B
Most Recent Funding Amount: $40.00B
2. xAI
Funding Score: 97.1
Total Funding Amount: $22.41B
Most Recent Funding Amount: $5.00B
3. CoreWeave
Funding Score: 96.0
Total Funding Amount: $17.18B
Most Recent Funding Amount: $1.75B
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.
| Company | Last Month’s Total Visits | Monthly Average Visits Over Last 6 Months | Monthly Visit Growth | Website Score* |
| 96.55B | 114.42B | -8.41% | 100.0 | |
| OpenAI | 1.12B | 1.25B | -5.29% | 82.6 |
| GitHub | 723.6M | 861.0M | -10.33% | 80.8 |
| Brave | 423.2M | 436.3M | -4.26% | 78.7 |
| Perplexity | 141.3M | 146.3M | -7.61% | 74.3 |
| Character.ai | 123.9M | 165.5M | -8.10% | 74.3 |
| Grammarly | 51.2M | 71.6M | -17.07% | 70.6 |
| NVIDIA | 51.6M | 70.4M | -17.19% | 70.5 |
| Suno | 46.4M | 54.6M | -11.32% | 70.1 |
| ElevenLabs | 47.6M | 38.1M | 6.66% | 70.0 |
*GFD’s Website Score captures the volume of recent website visits and combines it with the company’s website growth trends.
Key Takeaways:
- Google is the number 1 ranked company for Website ranking as it has reached over 100B visits per month in 2025.
- 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. Google
Website Score: 100.0
Last Month’s Total Visits: 96.55B
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 114.42B
Monthly Visit Growth: -8.41%
2. OpenAI
Website Score: 82.6
Last Month’s Total Visits: 1.12B
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 1.25B
Monthly Visit Growth: -5.29%
3. GitHub
Website Score: 80.8
Last Month’s Total Visits: 723.6M
Monthly Average Visits Over 6 Months: 861.0M
Monthly Visit Growth: -10.33%
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.
| Company | Total Keyword Search Volume (1 Month) | Average Weekly Search Volume Change (1 Year) | 1 Year Trend Positive or Negative? | Branded Keyword Ranking* |
| 414.0M | -169627.82 | – | 100.0 | |
| Perplexity | 11.1M | 74754.04 | + | 86.1 |
| OpenAI | 7.5M | 26155.84 | + | 80.5 |
| GitHub | 9.1M | 11452.73 | + | 79.3 |
| LMArena | 3.4M | 21039.52 | + | 78.6 |
| Windsurf | 450K | 7985.33 | + | 78.4 |
| ElevenLabs | 4.1M | 11475.87 | + | 76.2 |
| NVIDIA | 6.1M | -891.85 | – | 75.6 |
| Grammarly | 7.5M | -11046.56 | – | 75.4 |
| Meta | 2.7M | 5596.99 | + | 73.1 |
*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 Perplexity, OpenAI, and GitHub, each with over 7.5M searches in July 2025.
1. Google
Branded Keyword Score: 100.0
Total Keyword Search Volume: 414.0M
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: -169627.82
2. Perplexity
Branded Keyword Score: 86.1
Total Keyword Search Volume: 11.1M
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: 74754.04
3. OpenAI
Branded Keyword Score: 80.5
Total Keyword Search Volume: 7.5M
Average Weekly Search Volume Change: 26155.84
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
