Trendsetters of Tomorrow: Unmissable AI Startups in 2023

2023 can be safely called a period of rapid development for AI startups. It is not in vain that this direction is considered one of the most promising, which is confirmed by the interest in it from the largest IT corporations and their multimillion-dollar investments. Given the relevance of this topic, we devoted our next article to it. We present to your attention an overview of the most famous and promising startups that use AI technologies in their development.

Artificial intelligence is at the forefront of progress today. There are very high hopes for it. Currently, it is actively modifying many areas, professions, and occupations of a person. As the influence of artificial intelligence becomes even more pronounced in the future, it is set to radically transform almost all aspects of human life. It is not surprising that such promising technologies are of interest not only to enthusiasts, but also to large businesses. In 2022, AI startups raised more than $52 billion in venture capital investments, and this year, apparently, they will be able to raise much more.

However, projects involving AI began to appear much earlier, not just in the last few years. One of the pioneers in this field is OpenAI. It was founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization by programmer and IT entrepreneur Sam Altman and Elon Musk. In 2018, Musk resigned from the company's board of directors due to a conflict of interest with another of his Tesla projects, which was devoted to the development of AI systems for unmanned vehicles.

A year later, OpenAI ceased to be a purely non-profit organization as a subsidiary of the commercial corporation OpenAI LP appeared in its structure. It issued shares and distributed them among its employees, and it also received a $1 billion investment package from Microsoft. Since then, its systems have been running on Microsoft supercomputers based on the Azure platform. In 2020, an innovative AI company introduced the GPT-3 language AI model, which was trained on large datasets and provided many opportunities for processing, generating, and translating text.

In 2021, OpenAI released the DALL-E neural network, which was developed using deep learning technologies. It can generate images with different concepts, attributes, and styles based on user text prompts (text-to-image model). The following year, the AI startup introduced the ChatGPT smart chatbot, which was based on the GPT-3 language model. Over time, it has been updated to the next version of GPT-4.

ChatGPT can engage in dialogue with users and provide detailed information in response to their requests. This chatbot is capable of generating up to 25,000 words in a single response, translating text into dozens of languages, writing literary works, technical articles, and even program code, as well as analyzing images and explaining their meaning. Such rich and versatile functionality has made ChatGPT one of the main AI trends 2023.

Thanks to its achievements, OpenAI has become a recognized leader in the field of artificial intelligence. At the same time, many young companies are now actively working on the creation of no less promising products. Let's talk about the most promising AI startups and their developments.

Leading our top AI startups is Abnormal Security, whose flagship product is an AI-enabled email security platform. It was founded in 2018 by Evan Reiser and Sanjay Jeyakumar. Today, the capitalization of this startup in the field of cybersecurity is $4 billion. Over the years of its activity, it has attracted $284 million in investments.

The cloud software developed by Abnormal Security uses artificial intelligence technologies and is based on the science of behavioral data. This allows it to effectively prevent hacker attacks involving social engineering and other attempts at unauthorized access to corporate email accounts. An important platform tool is the Abnormal Behavior Technology (ABX) AI solution. It automatically monitors and analyzes all incoming and outgoing emails for potential threats.

Abnormal Security has changed the traditional cybersecurity model by integrating its software with the artificial intelligence future. This helped it create a truly functional system with a focus on protecting against sophisticated hacker attacks. The startup's solutions are used by 5% of Fortune 1000 companies and many other well-known brands, including Xerox, Hitachi Vantara, Urban Outfitters, Groupon, Royal Caribbean International, and Auto Club Group-AAA. In 2022, Abnormal Security tripled its annual revenue, doubled its headcount, and introduced the next-generation email security platform, Abnormal Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES).

In 2023, the company released three new products designed to secure Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom services. Now, their users can automatically monitor any suspicious activity and identify potential threats within not only mail but also other popular communication platforms.

Continuing the review of the most striking AI trends in 2023, it is worth noting the California-based startup Adept AI from San Francisco, founded in January 2022 by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. This is one of the most promising projects in the field of artificial intelligence, using machine learning and computer vision methods. Its focus is on the automation of software processes. It helps software developers efficiently automate repetitive tasks such as filling out forms, answering incoming emails, searching for information, and so on.

Adept AI's product is an artificial intelligence model called Action Transformer (ACT-1). According to its creators, it can fully interact with a computer, just like a person does. The neural network is trained to perform many actions when working on a computer, including using software tools, web applications, and APIs. In addition to multifunctionality, ACT-1 is capable of self-learning. If it needs to find out any information, it independently finds it on the Internet. The interface of the neural network is similar to that of other AI systems: users enter their command into the text field, and the neural network processes and executes their request.

The innovation and forward-thinking of the Action Transformer model have secured Adept AI a well-deserved spot among the top AI startups 2023. In March of this year, the company raised $350 million in a Series B round from a group of investors that included General Catalyst, Spark Capital, Addition, Greylock, Atlassian Ventures, Microsoft, Nvidia, Workday Ventures, Caterina Fake, Frontiers Capital, PSP Growth, SV Angel, and A.Capital. Today, the startup's total funding has reached $415 million, and its capitalization is at least $1 billion, according to Forbes.

Anthropic is a San Francisco-based startup known for its generative AI projects. It was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei. Its team is developing neural networks based on the principle of responsible use of artificial intelligence. The goal of the startup is to create technologies that are not only functional, but also safe for humans. During their projects, specialists apply the method of constitutional AI, teaching neural networks to follow certain sets of rules called constitutions. Anthropic also explores the interpretability of machine learning systems, with a particular focus on transformer neural networks.

The flagship product of this company is the Claude smart chatbot. Its functionality and interface are in many ways reminiscent of the famous ChatGPT from OpenAI; users can also send text requests to the bot and receive responses through a dialog box. Previously, this service was only available in closed beta through Slack integration. Subsequently, the Anthropic chatbot appeared in the public domain in the Poe application on Quora. It can also be used through the iOS mobile app. In addition to the standard version of its product, the startup released its simplified version, Claude Instant.

In May 2023, Anthropic received $450 million in a Series C investment involving Spark Capital, Google, Salesforce, Zoom, Sound Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and more. The start-up has raised over $700 million in three funding rounds, raising its capitalization to an impressive $1.45 billion.

The next company in our roundup of the best AI startups in 2023 also introduces a language model powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Character.AI was founded in September 2022 by former Google LaMDA project employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. The neural network they developed allows them not only to communicate with it in a dialogue format but also to generate numerous avatar characters with individual personality traits.

After creating their own avatar with the specified parameters, users can add it to the project community, allowing other participants to interact with it. The Character.AI language model provides great potential for customization of such characters. For example, you can endow the avatar with the features of appearance, voice, and manner of communication of any famous personalities (both real and fictional) or make it completely original. It all depends on the desire of users and their experience with this language model.

The neural network generates not only virtual interlocutors but also full-fledged AI assistants with various functions related to writing texts. Users can chat with a selected avatar in a private chat or create group conversations with multiple avatars that interact both with people and among themselves. Character.AI launched as a mobile app for iOS and Android in May 2023 and received over 1.7 million installations in the first week. Two months earlier, it raised $150 million from a group of investors led by the Andreessen Horowitz fund, after which the startup's capitalization increased to an impressive $1 billion.

One of the most promising startups in AI, MosaicML has challenged the recognized of the AI market leaders, in particular the previously mentioned OpenAI corporation. It was founded in 2021 in San Francisco by a group of former Intel employees led by Naveen Rao. The company's product is a platform for learning, deploying, and scaling neural networks. It creates personalized AI systems for businesses with flexible functionality that train on data provided by companies.

The MosaicML platform is based on deep learning technology. This allows it to effectively train neural networks within the framework of the tasks set by the customer. For these purposes, the startup uses the latest equipment and huge amounts of data. In May 2023, the company announced the release of new services that compete with the products of OpenAI and Anthropic. One such product is called the Interference Service. It is intended for software developers who want to add AI support to their software. For example, create a virtual assistant that can interact with users and respond to their requests or generate images based on text descriptions.

For the new service, the MosaicML team developed its own basic models, similar to the technologies that underlie chatbot-enabled products from Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. According to company representatives, they will offer their services 15 times cheaper than their more well-known competitors.

In October 2021, the MosaicML startup received $37 million in venture capital investments during the C round. Eight companies participated in the financing: DCVC, AME Cloud Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Lux Capital, and others.

Jasper, a high-performance AI platform for creating high-quality and original web content, deserves a place on the list of best AI startups. Led by Dave Rogenmoser, the San Francisco-based startup was founded in 2015. As of 2023, it is considered a full-fledged "unicorn" with a capitalization of $1.5 billion. Over the years, the company has raised $125 million in venture capital funding. It launched its Jasper.AI service in 2021. Since then, it has regularly been ranked among the top AI tools for content creators and marketers.

Jasper.AI is based on generative AI algorithms that provide it with solid functionality. It independently generates text according to given prompts and provides a number of auxiliary tools for correcting text and optimizing its writing by the user. In addition to this AI platform for text content, the company released Jasper Art, a neural network for generating images in different styles and formats based on text-to-image prompts.

As one of the AI startups 2023, Jasper goes beyond classic AI text generators like ChatGPT. The developers have made it not so much a virtual replacement for content authors as a multifunctional tool that is designed to increase the productivity and quality of human creativity. The service is suitable for both individual and team work. The Jasper for Teams version contains a number of useful features for collaborative content creation and editing (from brainstorming to complex analytics).

Founded in 2018, Insitro is a California-based startup focused on machine learning-assisted pharmaceutical development. Its CEO is Daphne Koller, who has studied ML technologies since 1995, when she was a professor at Stanford. Although the scope of Insitro is not directly related to IT, it can still be classified as one of the best AI startups.

The company uses artificial intelligence combined with advanced bioengineering technologies. This allows it to generate high-throughput genomic datasets and match them with gene and cell data from real patients using machine learning techniques. As a result of this combination, highly accurate predictive models are obtained, which are necessary for the creation of new effective drugs.

Insitro's developments are of particular interest to large pharmaceutical corporations. With their help, they can potentially speed up and reduce the cost of manufacturing drugs, minimizing the costs of developing obviously unsuccessful projects. The start-up's prospects for the giant and expensive pharmaceutical industry brought it almost $750 million in investments, thanks to which its capitalization reached $2.4 billion.

After reviewing the products and success stories of the most promising AI startups, we can conclude that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are developing much faster than recently predicted. A noticeable trend in this area is the versatility of AI developments. Of course, at their peak in 2023, generative language models will enable the auto-generation of text and images. Therefore, most of the startups on our list are represented by such technologies. However, some companies have not limited themselves to trending areas, but have created innovative products for other important areas, from personalized training of neural networks to the use of machine learning to discover new drugs.

Time is the most valuable resource for business today. Almost half of it is wasted on routine tasks. Your employees are constantly forced to perform monotonous tasks that are difficult to classify as important and specialized. You can leave everything as it is by hiring additional employees, or you can automate most of the business processes using the ApiX-Drive online connector to get rid of unnecessary time and money expenses once and for all. The choice is yours!