AI Unicorns Among World's Highest-Valued Startups
Boom phases in the development of artificial intelligence, such as the victory of the chess computer Deep Blue over at the time world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997, have been around for decades. However, none have piqued the interest of investors and big tech companies as much as the current one. This wave of AI investment began with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a direct-to-consumer application based on the GPT language model.
Critics see this type of artificial intelligence as little more than "stochastic parrots" that put together words and sentences according to statistical probabilities. AI evangelists, on the other hand, champion ChatGPT as the first big step towards a true "Artificial General Intelligence" that could exhibit the same cognitive abilities as a human. Companies and investors aren't afraid to spend big to accelerate this development.
An analysis of CB Insights data shows that OpenAI was valued at $300 billion as of July 2025, having raised around $64 billion in capital through partnerships with Microsoft and other investments. This makes it the highest-valued AI unicorn by far. Big data analysis platform Databricks ranks second with a $62-billion valuation, while Anthropic, the company behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is not far behind in third place, valued at $61.5 billion. Both have received funding approaching $20 billion. Together with Elon Musk's xAI, four AI companies were among the 10 highest-valued unicorns in the world as of the most current data.
Another striking fact: Seven of the eight highest-valued AI companies are based in the U.S. The sole outlier is Celonis, a German company founded in 2011 in Munich, but very active in the United States as well. It grew with the help of partner-turned-competitor SAP and specializes in process mining, where AI and other tools are used to optimize company processes. Celonis is valued at $13 billion at funding of $2.4 billion.
Another high performer is U.S. company Safe Superintelligence, valued at $30 billion despite funding of just $3 billion. Founded just one year ago by former OpenAI and Apple employees as well as AI researchers, it aims to create a superintelligent AI that is also exceptionally safe.