"Analysis of the 15 Most Profitable Unlisted AI Companies in 2025"
AI companies now use ARR (Average Revenue Count) for valuation in financing and acquisitions. Here is a ranking of AI companies by ARR:
1. OpenAI - ARR: $13 billion - $15 billion
Developer of ChatGPT, a global standard setter for large models and APIs.
2. Anthropic - ARR: $7 billion - $9 billion
Parent company of the Claude model, specializing in enterprise-grade long text and secure AI.
3. Databricks - ARR: $4.8 billion - $5.5 billion
Big data unicorn, providing enterprise-level private AI development and storage platforms.
4. Canva - ARR: $3 billion - $3.5 billion
Creative design platform, fully empowered by the Magic Studio AI suite.
5. Scale AI - ARR: $1.8 billion - $2.5 billion
The largest data annotation provider, the "data factory" behind large models.
6. Midjourney - ARR: $1 billion - $1.2 billion A leading AI image generation tool, achieving high profits through a pure subscription model.
7. Cursor - ARR: $800 million - $1.2 billion The hottest AI-native programming editor, a rapid replacement for traditional IDEs.
8. xAI - ARR: $500 million - $700 million Elon Musk's company, developing Grok models based on X platform data.
9. Perplexity - ARR: $300 million - $500 million A leader in AI search, providing a precise answering experience with source citations.
10. ElevenLabs - ARR: $200 million - $400 million A global benchmark for audio AI, focusing on extremely realistic voice cloning and translation.
11. Glean - ARR: $200 million - $350 million An enterprise-grade internal search agent, providing one-stop access to all company documents.
12. Lovable - ARR: $200 million+ A pioneer in democratizing programming, allowing beginners to create apps simply by speaking.
13. Hugging Face - ARR: $150 million - $250 million The GitHub of AI, the world's largest community for hosting models and computing power.
14. Synthesia - ARR: $150 million - $200 million A virtual human video generation platform, focusing on corporate training and digital human broadcasting.
15. Manus - ARR: $125 million+ The world's first general-purpose AI agent, capable of autonomously operating computers to perform complex tasks.
Thoughts on AI Business Models
- Revenue is concentrated in leading large model companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
- Vibe coding is on the rise, with companies like Cursor and Lovable.
- In the AI era, data remains a lucrative business, as exemplified by Data Bricks and Scale.
- Besides 2C subscriptions, enterprise services are also a source of AI revenue, such as Anthropic's enterprise long-text service, Databricks' private platform, and Glaan's enterprise search.
- Revenue from visual/video/audio services is also substantial, and companies that excel in vertical sectors can even outcompete general-purpose large model companies, such as Canva, Mid Journey, ElevenLabs, and Synthesia.
- Real-time information acquisition and analysis are crucial, such as Perplexity's accurate search-based answers and xAI's real-time Twitter data.
- Open source is also a business, and it will continue to grow, as exemplified by Hugging Face's open-source model hosting.
- The era of agents is dawning, with companies like Manus, the world's first general-purpose AI agent, and Glaan, an enterprise-grade internal search agent.
What other AI companies do you think are worth paying attention to?