AI21 Labs Named to the 2023 CB Insights GenAI 50 List of Most Innovative Generative AI Startups

AI21 Labs Named to the 2023 CB Insights GenAI 50 List of Most Innovative Generative AI Startups

Entrepreneurs / 14th August 2023

CB Insights has named AI21 Labs to its first annual GenAI 50 ranking, a list of the world’s top 50 most innovative companies developing generative AI applications and infrastructure across industries.

“Generative AI has created a paradigm shift in how companies innovate, and our first ever GenAI 50 cohort is leading the way,” said Deepashri Varadharajan, Director of AI research at CB Insights. “Together, they are pushing the boundaries of drug discovery, human-machine interfaces, database tech, and more. As this future seemingly unfolds before our eyes, I cannot wait to see what they accomplish next.”

“AI21 Labs is honored to be named among the distinguished generative AI trailblazers on CB Insights’ inaugural GenAI 50 list. Since we launched in 2017, we have worked to constantly innovate and stay a step ahead of the game in generative AI,” said Ori Goshen, CEO and Co-Founder of AI21 Labs. “We are proud to be recognized among other industry leaders as we continue to bring the power of generative AI to professionals and enterprises with tools that are both reliable and useful.”

The CB Insights’ research team picked these 50 private market vendors using datasets, including R&D activity, proprietary Mosaic scores, business relationships, Yardstiq transcripts, investor profiles, news sentiment analysis, competitive landscape, and team strength – and criteria such as tech novelty and market potential.

AI21 Labs develops advanced AI systems with an unprecedented capacity to understand and generate natural language. The company launched out of stealth in October 2020 with its first product Wordtune, the first AI-based reading and writing companion that could understand context and meaning from natural language. Wordtune quickly grew in users and has evolved, constantly adding new generative AI features. In August 2021, AI21 Labs launched its first LLM, Jurassic-1 and has since launched Jurassic-2, featuring advanced instruction following capabilities, support in a variety of languages, reduced latency, and the most up-to-date data in the industry. AI21 Labs also offers a variety of APIs, including Contextual Answers, which provides grounded answers to free-form user questions solely based on organizational data with zero hallucinations. AI21 Lab’s AI models are used by Amazon’s Bedrock, offering Amazon customers an accessible way to build generative AI-powered apps via pre-trained models. In July AI21 Labs was named on CB Insights’ annual AI 100 list.

Quick facts on the 2023 GenAI 50: 

• Equity funding and deals: The cohort has raised nearly $20B across 144 deals since 2019 (as of 7/31/23).
• Unicorns: There are 11 companies with $1B+ valuations on the list.
• Most Represented Categories: The cohort is broken down across seven industries, 9 cross-industry applications, and five categories of AI development tools. Foundational models & APIs account for the largest portion of the winners (6 companies). Winners here are developing core AI models and offering API access to enterprises to allow developers to build a wide range of applications such as summarization, toxic content moderation, and customer sentiment analysis. Media & entertainment follows closely behind with five winners. This category represents applications like video & podcast editing and genAI-powered visual effect tools.
• Geographic distributions: The Gen AI 50 winners represent seven different countries across the globe. Three-quarters of the selected companies are headquartered in the US. The UK comes in second with five winners, and Canada and the Netherlands follow closely with two each. Other countries home to a winner/winners on this list include France, Germany, and Israel.