When we published our list of 50 trending tech startups, surprise surprise—AI companies topped the list. In fact, AI is so hot right now that I decided to add hundreds of AI startups to our company list and run the same analysis, to see which companies are best riding the AI hype.
Here’s how we built this list (and how you can do the same using Ahrefs):
- Used Keywords Explorer to find keyword data for every company’s brand name (e.g. “sahara ai” for Sahara AI)
- Used the Trending filter to identify high-growth keywords (this sorts keywords by their 12-month growth trend¹ and sets a minimum monthly search volume²)
- Filtered to keywords with Branded search intent³
| Rank | Company | Brand Search Growth (12mo) | Global Branded Search Volume | Total Funding | Estimated Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sahara AI | +646% | 1,100 | $49.0M | $17.5M |
| 2 | Artisan AI | +197% | 2,700 | $21.1M | $4.5M |
| 3 | Air Space Intelligence | +174% | 600 | $27.0M | $5.5M |
| 4 | StealthGPT | +142% | 9,200 | $0.0M | $0.5M |
| 5 | Acrisure Innovation | +114% | 300 | $3454.0M | $3000.0M |
| 6 | Perplexity AI | +75% | 3,630,000 | $165.4M | $17.5M |
| 7 | Mistral AI | +59% | 132,000 | $894.8M | $5.5M |
| 8 | Elicit AI | +57% | 41,000 | $11.0M | $5.5M |
| 9 | YoDayo | +55% | 295,000 | $5.2M | $5.5M |
| 10 | HitPaw | +53% | 62,000 | $0.0M | $0.5M |
| 11 | Blaze AI | +47% | 16,000 | $0.0M | $5.5M |
| 12 | Hebbia | +44% | 6,600 | $161.1M | $17.5M |
| 13 | Arize AI | +44% | 4,100 | $61.0M | $17.5M |
| 14 | Weaviate | +43% | 8,800 | $67.7M | $37.5M |
| 15 | Slingshot AI | +41% | 450 | $36.2M | $17.5M |
| 16 | DataSnipper | +40% | 7,500 | $100.0M | $37.5M |
| 17 | Tuva Health | +40% | 200 | $0.5M | $5.5M |
| 18 | Machina Labs | +40% | 1,800 | $50.3M | $37.5M |
| 19 | Topline Pro | +40% | 500 | $17.1M | $175.0M |
| 20 | Kaedim | +39% | 3,500 | $15.3M | $5.5M |
| 21 | PlayHT | +39% | 65,000 | $2.7M | $5.5M |
| 22 | Together AI | +38% | 6,500 | $3.4M | $5.5M |
| 23 | EliseAI | +37% | 2,300 | $140.8M | $17.5M |
| 24 | Abacus.AI | +37% | 600 | $90.3M | $37.5M |
| 25 | Redflag AI | +35% | 300 | $7.4M | $5.5M |
| 26 | MarqVision | +35% | 1,300 | $41.5M | $37.5M |
| 27 | AI21 Labs | +33% | 2,100 | $336.0M | $75.0M |
| 28 | Vannevar Labs | +32% | 3,600 | $91.1M | $17.5M |
| 29 | Reclaim.ai | +32% | 1,900 | $11.0M | $1.0M |
| 30 | ElevenLabs | +32% | 1,310,000 | $0.0M | $5.5M |
| 31 | Codeium | +32% | 67,000 | $246.0M | $17.5M |
| 32 | Fireworks AI | +31% | 4,600 | $77.0M | $5.5M |
| 33 | GrayMatter Robotics | +31% | 300 | $70.4M | $17.5M |
| 34 | Midjourney | +30% | 2,340,000 | $0.0M | $750.0M |
| 35 | Docsumo | +30% | 5,200 | $3.7M | $17.5M |
| 36 | Aleph Alpha | +29% | 23,000 | $643.3M | $175.0M |
| 37 | AISDR | +29% | 1,400 | $3.5M | $5.5M |
| 38 | PolyAI | +28% | 6,600 | $121.0M | $17.5M |
| 39 | Character.AI | +27% | 114,000 | $150.1M | $17.5M |
| 40 | MindsDB | +27% | 1,800 | $54.5M | $5.5M |
| 41 | Monterey AI | +27% | 350 | $2.8M | $5.5M |
| 42 | Tempus AI | +26% | 11,000 | $1085.3M | $210.1M |
| 43 | Luxonis | +26% | 1,800 | $6.3M | $17.5M |
| 44 | Tennr | +25% | 2,300 | $60.0M | $17.5M |
| 45 | Cisco ThousandEyes | +25% | 3,300 | $1112.8M | $84.0M |
| 46 | HeyGen | +25% | 470,000 | $77.6M | $17.5M |
| 47 | Builder.ai | +25% | 5,300 | $445.0M | $168.0M |
| 48 | Otter AI | +24% | 205,000 | $83.0M | $37.5M |
| 49 | Writesonic | +24% | 228,000 | $2.6M | $37.5M |
| 50 | Humanloop | +24% | 2,800 | $7.9M | $5.5M |
Year founded: 2023
Location: California
Estimated revenue: $17.5M
Total funding: $49M
Global search volume: 1,100 searches per month
Sahara AI is a decentralized blockchain platform focused on democratizing the AI ecosystem. I have no idea what that means, but their huge brand search growth suggests people absolutely love it. I guess this is what comes of having the words “blockchain” and “AI” in your company description.
Year founded: 2023
Location: California
Estimated revenue: $4.5M
Total funding: $21.1M
Global search volume: 2,700 searches per month
Artisan AI offers “AI employees” to handle sales outreach. AI SDRs for personalized email outreach is a pretty popular use case for generative AI, and if the company name sounds familiar, it’s because they went viral on Reddit recently for their “Stop Hiring Humans” booth at TechCrunch Disrupt. (The fact that they’re on this list suggests that the campaign worked.)
Year founded: 2018
Location: San Francisco
Estimated revenue: $5.5M
Total funding: $27M
Global search volume: 600 searches per month
Air Space Intelligence provides the Flyways AI Platform, which combines predictive situational awareness with high-performance user experiences to optimize airline operations. The platform assists in network management, flight operations, and communication, enhancing safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
Year founded: 2023
Location: Miami, Florida
Estimated revenue: $0.5M
Total funding: $0
Global search volume: 9,100 searches per month
StealthGPT is an AI platform that generates human-like text designed to evade AI detection systems. It offers tools for creating (apparently) undetectable content, including academic papers and blogs, and features an AI Humanizer to refine AI-generated text.
Year founded: 2006
Location: Michigan
Estimated revenue: $3000M
Total funding: $3454M
Global search volume: 300 searches per month
Acrisure Innovation is the skunkworks of global insurance provider Acrissure, touting an “AI-driven team building innovative software to disrupt the $6T+ insurance industry”.
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco
Estimated revenue: $17.5M
Total funding: $377.3M
Global search volume: 3,580,000 searches per month
Perplexity AI is an AI-driven search engine that combines large language models with real-time web data. Perplexity AI offers both free and paid versions, and many people have touted it as a potential “Google killer”. If you want some ideas for how to get your brand to appear in Perplexity searches, check out our guide to LLM optimization.
Year founded: 2023
Location: Aquitaine, France
Estimated revenue: $5.5M
Total funding: $894.8M
Global search volume: 132,000 searches per month
Mistral AI develops open-weight generative AI models for developers and businesses, emphasizing openness, portability, and customization. Their models are designed for deployment across various environments, offering efficient and powerful AI solutions.
Year founded: 2023
Location: California
Estimated revenue: $5.5M
Total funding: $11.0M
Global search volume: 41,000 searches per month
Elicit is an AI research assistant that automates tasks like summarizing papers, extracting data, and synthesizing findings. It helps researchers analyze academic literature efficiently, providing organized tables and insights from a vast database of papers.
Year founded: 2022
Location: New York
Estimated revenue: $5.5M
Total funding: $5.2M
Global search volume: 295,000 searches per month
YoDayo is an AI-enabled creative platform for anime enthusiasts, offering tools for generating AI art and engaging with AI chatbots that emulate anime characters. Users can create and customize art in various anime styles and interact with characters through immersive chats.
Year founded: 2019
Location: Hong Kong
Estimated revenue: $0.5M
Total funding: $0M
Global search volume: 62,000 searches per month
HitPaw provides a suite of multimedia tools powered by AI, including video converters, photo enhancers, and voice changers. Their products aim to simplify video, audio, and image editing processes for users across different platforms.
Final thoughts
All of the growth data for this article comes from Ahrefs. Want to find trending companies for yourself? Check out Keywords Explorer.
