This year's edition of the Enterprise Tech 30 list, compiled by venture capital firm Wing and shared exclusively with Axios, highlights the dominance of AI companies in the field of technology sales to businesses. The list showcases 40 companies, including 10 in the early stage, 10 in the mid-stage, 10 in the late stage, and 10 "giga" companies. Notably, 17 of the 40 companies are new additions to the list. AI's prominence is evident in this year's ET30, particularly in companies involved in building AI infrastructure, tooling, and core model technologies. Peter Wagner, a founding partner at Wing, highlights that the focus on AI aligns with the growing investment in generative AI over the past two years.

However, it remains to be seen how much this technology will impact productivity and profitability. Breaking down the numbers, the 17 new companies consist of 7 in AI models and tools, 3 in data platforms or business intelligence, and 4 in software-as-a-service. AI models and tools represent 30% of the ET30 2024 companies, followed by 25% in SaaS, 20% in data platforms/business intelligence, 10% in cybersecurity, and 5% each in developer tools, fintech, and defense/aerospace. The dominance of AI companies is most pronounced in the early stage cohort, while the late stage and "giga" companies represent a more diverse range of industries. Wagner explains that this pattern is expected, as the larger firms were established prior to the "GenAI moment" ignited by the release of ChatGPT in 2022. Among the standout companies included in the list is LangChain, which develops tools for applications powered by large language models, earning the top spot in the early stage category. In the mid-stage category, Pinecone shines with its data platform that enhances results from large language models through training on specific data, utilizing a technique called RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). Looking back at last year's list, AI also claimed a prominent role, with one-third of the companies focusing on generative AI.