Between 2015 and 2022, a silent revolution unfolded one not led by tech giants, but by bold AI startups quietly reshaping how industries think, build and grow. From algorithmic breakthroughs to real-world applications in drug discovery, logistics, climate modeling, and enterprise automation, these startups defined direction.
This curated list brings together standout AI startups from across the globe and the US, offering a snapshot of the innovation that defined a critical era. Whether you’re tracking rising players or exploring sector-specific movements, these names offer a window into where AI has been and where it’s heading.
Do read about some interesting highlights of the US Startups Acquisitions, and Recent Acquisitions of US.
Which Are the Top Countries Leading the AI Startups Landscape?
Between 2015 and 2022, the United States dominated the AI startup race. Of all the AI startups globally, nearly one-third (265) were US-based, eclipsing the combined total of the next nine countries on the list. The United Kingdom, India and Israel followed at a distant second, third and fourth with 42, 29 and 26 startups respectively.
This isn’t just about quantity. The US also leads in AI unicorns, R&D funding and foundational model development thanks to its deep venture capital ecosystem, elite academic centers like MIT and Stanford and corporate R&D hubs from OpenAI to Nvidia.
Interestingly, countries like Israel and India are gaining momentum, not through scale, but through specialization, focusing on AI for cybersecurity, fintech and enterprise automation.
The dominance of U.S. startups is further underlined by the unicorn count in the donut chart only 9% of the featured companies have crossed the billion-dollar mark, and a large share of those are US-born. This stark gap also reflects the high-risk, high-reward nature of AI innovation.
Top 20 Countries Leading the AI Startups Landscape
| Country | Count of AI Startups |
| USA | 265 |
| United Kingdom | 42 |
| India | 29 |
| Israel | 26 |
| China | 21 |
| Germany | 19 |
| Canada | 18 |
| France | 17 |
| Japan | 11 |
| Australia | 10 |
| South Korea | 7 |
| Spain | 7 |
| Netherlands | 7 |
| Switzerland | 6 |
| Finland | 5 |
| Estonia | 4 |
| Singapore | 4 |
| Russia | 4 |
| Norway | 4 |
| Austria | 3 |
How Has The Annual Growth of AI Startups Evolved Worldwide?
If one were to mark a single year that changed the trajectory of artificial intelligence startups, it would be 2016. As the chart illustrates, AI startups formation surged to a peak that year, with 185 new companies launched globally triple the number founded just a year earlier.
The spark? A machine beat a human at a game thought to be too intuitive for algorithms. When AlphaGo defeated Go world champion Lee Sedol in March 2016, it wasn’t just a win for DeepMind it was a turning point for global perception of what AI could achieve. Suddenly, AI wasn’t theoretical anymore; it was capable, competitive, and commercially viable.
Fueling this momentum was capital over $5 billion flowed into AI startups that year alone. Investors, emboldened by visible proof of AI’s potential, poured funds into companies working on everything from predictive analytics and computer vision to natural language processing and robotic automation.
Even governments and tech giants joined the wave. OpenAI was formed, Microsoft launched its AI division, and IBM doubled down on Watson.
From that peak in 2016, startup formation began to taper off. The decline wasn’t a retreat, but rather a recalibration. As the field matured, focus shifted to scaling, refining and commercializing what had already been built. And as we’ll soon explore, a large number of these early entrants especially those founded in 2016 are now today’s unicorns.
AI Startups Distribution Across US States
If the global AI startups landscape has a nerve center, it’s unmistakably the United States. From 2015 to 2022, the US gave rise to 265 AI Startups, and while California stands tallest, the ecosystem stretches far wider than Silicon Valley’s borders.
California alone accounts for 119 Startups, nearly half of the national total. It’s no mystery why home to Stanford, UC Berkeley, Google and Nvidia, the state blends academic brilliance with tech muscle and deep-pocketed venture capital. Startups like OpenAI, Databricks and Nuro didn’t just emerge here they flourished into unicorns with global influence.
The spotlight doesn’t end in the West. New York ranks second with 41 Startups, many operating at the crossroads of finance, data and automation. Think of UiPath or Dataminr, which transforms real-time data into actionable insights. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, with 14 Startups, pulls weight far beyond its count its AI strength is rooted in R&D from MIT and Harvard, spawning unicorns like PathAI in healthcare and Indigo Ag in agtech.
And perhaps the most telling data point? Of these 265 Startups, 37 have achieved unicorn status that’s 14% of the total, a share that signals not just experimentation, but scale.
US AI Startups That Became Unicorns
| Sr No | Company Name | State | Found Year |
| 1 | Dremio Corp | California | 2015 |
| 2 | Shield Ai Inc | California | 2015 |
| 3 | Finco Services Inc | New York | 2015 |
| 4 | Clarify Health Solutions Inc | California | 2015 |
| 5 | Clearcover Inc | Illinois | 2016 |
| 6 | K Health Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 7 | Groq Inc | California | 2016 |
| 8 | Owkin Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 9 | Cerebras Systems Inc | California | 2016 |
| 10 | Papaya Global Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 11 | Peopleai Inc | California | 2016 |
| 12 | Yugabyte Inc | California | 2016 |
| 13 | Amperity Inc | Washington | 2016 |
| 14 | Hugging Face Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 15 | Expel Inc | Virginia | 2016 |
| 16 | Ecoflow Technology Ltd | California | 2016 |
| 17 | Psiquantum Corp | California | 2016 |
| 18 | Keli Network Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 19 | Dbt Labs Inc | Pennsylvania | 2016 |
| 20 | Solugen Inc | Texas | 2016 |
| 21 | At-Bay Inc | California | 2016 |
| 22 | Sambanova Systems Inc | California | 2017 |
| 23 | Standard Cognition Corp | California | 2017 |
| 24 | Divvy Homes Inc | California | 2017 |
| 25 | Side Inc | California | 2017 |
| 26 | Modern Life Inc | California | 2017 |
| 27 | Rightway Healthcare Inc | New York | 2017 |
| 28 | Mobilecoin Inc | California | 2017 |
| 29 | Fireblocks Inc | New York | 2018 |
| 30 | Taxbit Inc | Utah | 2018 |
| 31 | Jupiterone Inc | North Carolina | 2018 |
| 32 | Critical Ideas Inc | California | 2018 |
| 33 | Misfits Market Inc | Oregon | 2018 |
| 34 | Certified Kernel Tech Llc | New York | 2018 |
| 35 | Chronosphere Inc | New York | 2019 |
| 36 | Orca Security Ltd | Oregon | 2019 |
| 37 | Whatnot Inc | California | 2019 |
Which US States Built the Most AI Unicorns?
When we talk about unicorns, it’s easy to assume they all spring from Silicon Valley. And while California still holds the crown, this chart tells a richer, more distributed story.
Between 2015 and 2019, California alone produced 18 AI unicorns, with the founding year clustering around 2016 and 2017, when investor confidence in AI hit its peak. This was the golden period that gave rise to OpenAI, Databricks, Nuro, and several others who not only scaled fast, but helped define AI’s real-world utility across sectors.
Close on California is New York, home to 10 AI unicorns, founded over a more evenly spread period. Unlike Silicon Valley’s tech-centric roots, New York’s unicorns often drew on the city’s strengths in finance, media and commerce think of Startups like UiPath and Dataminr, blending AI with high-stakes, real-time applications.
Nine other states also contributed at least one unicorn. While individually smaller, these entries mark a pivotal shift. States once seen as secondary players are now nurturing billion-dollar innovation,
List of 50 US-Based AI Startups Founded Between 2015 and 2022
| Sr No | Company Name | State | Found Year |
| 1 | Stowk Inc | California | 2015 |
| 2 | Dremio Corp | California | 2015 |
| 3 | Ghost Robotics Corp | Pennsylvania | 2015 |
| 4 | Novumind Inc | California | 2015 |
| 5 | Invia Robotics Inc | California | 2015 |
| 6 | Netradyne Inc | California | 2015 |
| 7 | Mycroft Ai Inc | Missouri | 2015 |
| 8 | Losant Iot Inc | Ohio | 2015 |
| 9 | Netobjex Inc | California | 2015 |
| 10 | Agentai Inc | California | 2015 |
| 11 | Shield Ai Inc | California | 2015 |
| 12 | Webtunix Solution Pvt Limited | New York | 2015 |
| 13 | Narrative Visualization Ou | California | 2015 |
| 14 | Prologue Immersive Inc | California | 2015 |
| 15 | Bloq Inc | Illinois | 2015 |
| 16 | Catalytic Inc | Illinois | 2015 |
| 17 | Focal Systems Inc | California | 2015 |
| 18 | Beta Bionics Inc | California | 2015 |
| 19 | Automate Io Inc | California | 2015 |
| 20 | Finco Services Inc | New York | 2015 |
| 21 | Clarify Health Solutions Inc | California | 2015 |
| 22 | Talon Aerolytics Inc | Georgia | 2015 |
| 23 | Robotic Services Inc | District of Columbia | 2015 |
| 24 | Numerai Gp Llc | California | 2015 |
| 25 | Language Hero Inc | New York | 2015 |
| 26 | Vigilance Risk Solutions Inc | California | 2015 |
| 27 | Qbitlogic Inc | Georgia | 2015 |
| 28 | Virvio | Washington | 2015 |
| 29 | Diligent Robotics Inc | Texas | 2016 |
| 30 | Sapientx Inc | California | 2016 |
| 31 | Congruity 360 Infogov Inc | Massachusetts | 2016 |
| 32 | Clearcover Inc | Illinois | 2016 |
| 33 | Satisfi Labs Inc | Florida | 2016 |
| 34 | Serviceaide Inc | California | 2016 |
| 35 | K Health Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 36 | Vue Ai | California | 2016 |
| 37 | Rulai Inc | California | 2016 |
| 38 | Groq Inc | California | 2016 |
| 39 | Owkin Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 40 | Cyware Labs Inc | New Jersey | 2016 |
| 41 | Xenonstack Pte Ltd | Texas | 2016 |
| 42 | Enveil Inc | Maryland | 2016 |
| 43 | Bext Holdings Inc | Colorado | 2016 |
| 44 | Rasa Technologies Inc | California | 2016 |
| 45 | Cerebras Systems Inc | California | 2016 |
| 46 | Aquant Inc | Massachusetts | 2016 |
| 47 | Gainfy Foundation | New York | 2016 |
| 48 | Snap2Insight Inc | Oregon | 2016 |
| 49 | Bigid Inc | New York | 2016 |
| 50 | Octane Ai Inc | California | 2016 |
Want to Know Which of These Startups Hold Patents?
While this list captures some of the most promising AI Startups in the US, not all of them have protected their innovations through patents.
If you’re looking for a refined list of AI Startups with active patent filings, simply fill out the form below.
