The recent list from CRN highlights ten AI startup companies to watch in 2025, including Writer, Safe Superintelligence, and Physical Intelligence. These startups, founded in 2018 or later, have gained attention for their significant funding in 2024 and strategic partnerships as they navigate the competitive AI landscape. Anthropic, under CEO Dario Amodei, has partnered with Amazon and continues to advance its AI chatbot, Claude. DevRev, led by CEO Dheeraj Pandey, offers an AI-native platform to unify customer support and product development, attracting over 1, 000 customers and significant investment. GMI Cloud, founded by Alex Yeh, provides scalable GPU platforms for AI training and processing, supported by recent funding for new infrastructure. Guidewheel, with CEO Lauren Dunford, uses AI-powered sensors to optimize factory operations, backed by prominent investors like BlackRock. Perplexity, facing legal challenges over AI-generated content, offers a free AI search engine and has raised substantial funds for further growth.

Physical Intelligence, co-founded by Karol Hausman, aims to integrate AI into physical tasks and services, with backing from key tech figures. Safe Superintelligence, co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, focuses on building secure AI systems with strong financial backing. World Labs, co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, is dedicated to developing large world models (LWMs) for 3D AI applications, with significant venture support. Writer, led by May Habib, enhances business processes through AI with recent substantial investment. Finally, xAI, founded by Elon Musk, is expanding its AI capabilities and influence, with considerable resources dedicated to advancing its GenAI chatbots and image generation technologies.