The explosive growth of the AI market has drawn huge attention from VC investors, who poured billions of dollars into AI companies and startups, even when most other sectors saw a considerable funding drop.
And while AI companies, in general, have become a new shiny object for investors, one of them stands out.
According to data presented by Stocklytics.com, OpenAI is the most funded AI company in the world, with $14 billion raised in funding rounds so far.
The release of OpenAI`s ChatGPT marked a turning point for the AI industry.
The chatbot, which became the fastest-growing app in history with 100 million users in just two months, turned artificial intelligence into one of the biggest stories in 2023 and started an AI renaissance that continued this year. So, it`s unsurprising that the ChatGPT owner, OpenAI, has drawn the most attention from VC investors.
CB Insight`s analysis of the 100 most promising AI startups shows that OpenAI raised over $14 billion in capital through partnerships with Microsoft and other investments, pushing valuation to a whopping $80 billion. This figure is even more impressive when compared to the capital raised by other most-funded AI companies. Statistics show that OpenAI alone raised more money than the seven other companies on the list, including Anthropic, Databricks, and Shield AI.
Anthropic, the company behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is in second place with $4.2 billion raised in funding rounds, or three times less than OpenAI. The big data analysis platform Databricks ranked third with $4 billion, followed by Shield AI`s $1 billion. All other most-funded AI companies raised less than one billion dollars in funding rounds.
The US AI robotics company, Figure, raised $854 million of fresh capital. Mistral AI, a French company founded just a year ago by former Meta and Google DeepMind employees, is one place behind with $544 million raised in less than twelve months. Another two US companies, Lightmatter and Adept, follow with $422 million and $415 million, respectively.
The CB Insights data also show that seven of the eight best-funded companies in the top 100, based on deal activity, industry partnerships, team strength, investor strength, and patent activity, are based in the United States.
With $14 billion of fresh capital poured into its business, OpenAI has climbed to the top of the global unicorn club. Valued at $80 billion, the ChatGPT maker is now the world`s third most valuable unicorn company in the world behind ByteDance and SpaceX and ahead of Chinese ecommerce giant SHEIN or the US payments provider, Stripe.
Statistics also show that the AI sector delivered more unicorns than any other market in 2023. Last year, 95 companies joined the global unicorn list, one-fifth of which were from the AI industry. These companies have collectively added more than $35 billion in value to the global unicorn club.
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