Meet the early-stage startups racing to define the future of artificial intelligence.
More than seven years since Forbes launched its first AI 50 list, the artificial intelligence industry has exploded, growing more expansive and increasingly too crowded for a single list to capture. As venture capital firms continue to pour money into AI, a new tier of startups has emerged: younger, earlier-stage companies building fast and raising faster as they try to rival their more established peers.
That’s why this year, for the first time, Forbes is introducing the AI 50 Brink List, spotlighting 20 of the most promising Seed and Series A-stage startups building in artificial intelligence. While the AI 50 reflects the industry’s current leaders, the Brink List offers a view into its future pipeline, highlighting up-and-comers that could shape the field’s trajectory.
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Although these companies may be young by traditional venture standards (on average, Brink startups are 24 months old), many are competing aggressively for both top AI talent and billion-dollar valuations. Resolve AI, for instance, is developing a system to help engineers identify and fix problems in code that’s already in production and has recruited talent from top labs like Meta and DeepMind. It just raised a Series A extension of $40 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.
This dynamic is especially evident in the rise of so-called “neo-labs,” which aim to push AI research forward. Multiple early executives at the big labs have departed to launch their own ventures, like ChatGPT co-creator Liam Fedus. His startup Periodic Labs is training models to accelerate scientific discovery in semiconductors, magnetism and superconductivity. The $4.5 billion-valued lab Humans&’s founding team hails from Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic, and is focused on using AI to help coordinate people and workflows. Then there’s Advanced Machine Intelligence, cofounded by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun along with several former senior Meta employees, which has already raised over $1 billion in funding since its launch in 2026. It is building systems that learn from video and spatial data in addition to text, especially in healthcare applications.
Nowhere is this research-first approach more consequential than in healthcare, one of the most tightly regulated domains, where a growing wave of startups is determined to integrate AI into various aspects of medicine. For example, Certuma is building what it hopes will become the first FDA-approved AI system capable of diagnosing conditions and prescribing treatments (See our feature on CEO and cofounder Martín Varsavsky). Latent Health, valued at $600 million, is tackling a different bottleneck: developing AI agents that help doctors convince insurance providers to approve drugs more quickly.
It’s that kind of ambition and innovation that’s attracted significant capital from investors. The 20 companies on Forbes’ inaugural AI 50 Brink list have raised over $3.5 billion altogether in Seed and Series A funding alone. Yet even as the AI innovation boom accelerates, a familiar gender imbalance persists. Just three female-led startups appear on this year’s list: Ricursive Intelligence, where CEO Anna Goldie is building self-improving AI chips; Axiom, where CEO Carina Hong is developing an AI mathematician; and Nectar Social, where CEO Misbah Uraizee is building a platform to monitor how social media creators’ posts translate to sales.
The Brink list is compiled by Forbes editors and reporters, based on business promise, early traction and the use of AI in solving a new type of problem. Applicants for AI 50 are automatically considered for the Brink list. For more, see our full package of AI 50 coverage, including a detailed explanation of the list methodology, videos and analyses on trends.
Here are the 20 early-stage AI companies to watch:
Accordance
David Yue
Marcus Burnett
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $13 million
Valuation: $80 million
Stage: Seed
CEO: David Yue
The Pitch: Tool that helps accountants speed up taxes, audits and financial reports
Advanced Machine Intelligence
Alexandre LeBrun
Advanced Machine Intelligence
Year Founded: 2026
HQ: Paris, France
Total Funding Raised: $1.03 billion
Valuation: $4.53 billion*
Stage: Seed
CEO: Alexandre LeBrun
The Pitch: AI that learns from real-world spatial data like video and sensors
*PitchBook estimates
Axiom
Carina Hong
Axiom
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: Palo Alto, CA
Total Funding Raised: $264 million
Valuation: $1.6 billion
Stage: Series A
CEO: Carina Hong
The Pitch: AI system solving complex math problems
Certuma
Martín Varsavsky
Guerin Blask for Forbes
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: Austin, TX
Total Funding Raised: $10 million
Valuation: $60 million
Stage: Seed
CEO: Martín Varsavsky
The Pitch: AI doctor that can diagnose illnesses and suggest treatments
Flapping Airplanes
Ben Spector, Asher Spector, and Aidan Smith
Flapping Airplanes
Year Founded: 2026
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $180 million*
Valuation: $1.5 billion*
Stage: Seed
CEO: Aidan Smith, Asher Spector, Ben Spector
The Pitch: AI models that ingest less data
*PitchBook estimates
Giga
Varun Vummadi
Giga
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $61 million
Valuation: $350 million
Stage: Series A
CEO: Varun Vummadi
The Pitch: AI agents for customer support
Humans&
Eric Zelikman
Xindi Wu
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $500 million
Valuation: $4.5 billion
Stage: Seed
CEO: Eric Zelikman
The Pitch: AI models that can better collaborate with humans
Irregular
Dan Lahav
Irregular
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $80 million
Valuation: $450 million
Stage: Series A
CEO: Dan Lahav
The Pitch: Tools to test AI models for risks and weaknesses
Latent Health
Sriram Somasundaram, Rishabh Jain
Darren Hull
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $80 million
Valuation: $600 million
Stage: Series A
CEO: Sriram Somasundaram, Rishabh Jain
The Pitch: AI agents that fill out insurance paperwork so patients can get prescribed drugs faster
Micro1
Ali Ansari
Joel Baez, Content Robots
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $41 million
Valuation: $500 million
Stage: Series A
CEO: Ali Ansari
The Pitch: System that provides data for AI labs
Nectar Social
Misbah Uraizee
Nectar Social
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Palo Alto, CA
Total Funding Raised: $10.6 million
Valuation: Undisclosed
Stage: Seed
CEO: Misbah Uraizee
The Pitch: AI tool that monitors social media to show which posts and interactions lead to sales
OpenRouter
Alex Atallah
OpenRouter
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: New York, NY
Total Funding Raised: $167.7 million*
Valuation: $1.3 billion*
Stage: Series A
CEO: Alex Atallah
The Pitch: Tool that helps apps switch between different AI models
*PitchBook estimates
Periodic Labs
Liam Fedus and Dogus Cubuk
Periodic Labs
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $300 million
Valuation: $1.3 billion
Stage: Seed
CEO: Liam Fedus, Dogus Cubuk
The Pitch: AI systems that can run scientific experiments
Resolve AI
Spiros Xanthos
Resolve AI
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $190 million
Valuation: $1.5 billion
Stage: Series A
CEO: Spiros Xanthos
The Pitch: Tools to monitor and fix software issues
Ricursive Intelligence
Anna Goldie
Jim Vetter
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: Palo Alto, CA
Total Funding Raised: $335 million
Valuation: $4 billion
Stage: Series A
CEO: Anna Goldie
The Pitch: Self-improving AI to design chips
Rox
Ishan Mukherjee
Ashley Maxwell
Year Founded: 2024
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $199 million*
Valuation: $1.2 billion*
Stage: Series A
CEO: Ishan Mukherjee
The Pitch: AI software that manages a company’s revenue cycle
*PitchBook estimates
Simile
Joon Sung Park
Simile
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: Palo Alto, CA
Total Funding Raised: $100 million
Valuation: ~$700 million
Stage: Series A
CEO: Joon Sung Park
The Pitch: Digital replicas of humans for market research
TollBit
Toshit Panigrahi
Tollbit
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: New York, NY
Total Funding Raised: $31 million
Valuation: $93.9 million*
Stage: Series A
CEO: Toshit Panigrahi
The Pitch: System that tracks AI bots visiting a website and lets publishers charge them for accessing content
*PitchBook estimates
Wispr Flow
Tanay Kothari
Wispr Flow
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $81 million
Valuation: $700 million*
Stage: Series A
CEO: Tanay Kothari
The Pitch: Voice-to-text tool that converts speech into writing
*PitchBook estimates
Worktrace AI
Deepak Vasisht
Studio B Portraits
Year Founded: 2025
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Total Funding Raised: $9.6 million
Valuation: $50 million
Stage: Seed
CEO: Deepak Vasisht
The Pitch: Tool that helps companies figure out tasks that can be automated
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