Forbes' AI 50 list

Plus User spending goes up by more than 4000% on AI-powered apps

Author

The Alignment
April 12, 2023

Forbes is out with another list, this time it's about AI, some pretty interesting companies in there. Talking about companies, user spending has increased 4000% on AI apps, oh and autonomous AI bots are now ordering pizzas !

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Here’s what we have lined up for you today - 

  1. Forbes AI 50 list

  2. User spending goes up by more than 4000% on AI-powered apps

  3. Autonomous agents can now order pizza !

Forbes lists have always been part of the technology zeitgeist. For reasons good and bad getting on the list is a huge signalling boost for any technologist. 

Now, together with Sequoia and Meritech Capital, Forbes has released their AI 50 list highlighting the most “promising” privately held AI companies. The companies have collectively raised $27.2 billion with a sizeable amount being raised by OpenAI ($10 billion). 

The list makes it evident that AI is touching all parts of the industry ranging from copywriting , law, drug discovery, video and image generation, search engines, disease detection to esoteric industries like forestry or weeding tractors for farming.

Some of the companies that are doing important work are flying under the radar - 

Pachama - These folks are using satellite data and AI to identify and track the most impactful forest preservation projects and helping organisations invest in them through carbon credits.

    Farmwise Labs - In the late 20th century tractors single handedly replaced farm workers and increased farm productivity by many orders of magnitude. Now Farmwise labs is using computer vision for industrial scale weeding and helping farmers maximise their crop yield. 

    The companies on this list are still very young and relatively early in their lifetime. Their growth over the coming decade will be one to follow amidst the emergence of even newer startups that are getting started every day. 

    Users love spending on AI apps. We’re in that phase of the AI bubble where eager users want to spend their money and test every shiny new tool that is hitting the market. The most popular amongst them are “AI Chatbot” apps. 

    Downloads for these mobile native apps are up 1506% year-on-year close to 20 million and in-app spending is up 4184% year-on-year ($3 million). While these numbers are still tiny when looked on their own, the more important thing to focus on are the trend lines. An exponential growth on spending shows the promise of the industry given the power of compounding. 

    These apps have been spun up relatively fast because they are all essentially using the same underlying technology optimised for different use cases. Naturally a big winner in this is OpenAI which has become the defacto developer platform for folks working on these apps. 

    Bing has also seen meteoric growth and the app’s daily downloads have increased by 1000%. Microsoft Edge browser downloads have also increased 135% year on year. That’s about ⅓  of Chrome’s downloads, a promising sign.

    We are at the start of a new technology revolution but we’ll have to be cautious on how exactly it’s going to pan out. Sustained growth and longevity is what matters most.

    Around the industry - 

    Product Corner - 

    There are way too many cool products to showcase just one !

    • KarenAI - AI-powered chatbot and voice synthesizer designed to solve annoying customer service situations. 

    • Hyperwrite AI - AI agents to autonomously surf the web.

    • AgentGPT - Configure and deploy autonomous agents in your browser

    • Cheff - Create endless recipes with Cheff

    • Oasis - Auto-generate emails, texts, songs, essays, scripts with AI when you speak

    • Hume - The empathic AI toolkit for researchers and developers

    Autonomous agents can now order pizza !