AI History Project

The AI Valuation Race

aihistoryproject.org

The AI Valuation Race

End-of-year valuations, 2020–2026, for the twenty most valuable AI-native companies of 2026 (plus one tie). The log scale is doing heavy lifting: top to bottom spans four orders of magnitude.

Hover a card to isolate a company
1Anthropic$965B
Foundation Models965× since ’21
$65B Series H at $965B — overtook OpenAI as the most valuable private AI company. IPO filed confidentially Jun 2026.
2OpenAI$852B
Foundation Models61× since ’21
$122B round at $852B — Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank in. S-1 filed confidentially Jun 2026.
3xAI$230B
Foundation Models4.6× since ’24
$20B Series E at $230B, then folded into SpaceX in a Feb 2026 merger valuing the pair at $1.25T.
Infra & Data22× since ’20
Series L closed at $134B; a further round at $188B was announced Jul 2026 but had not closed.
Foundation Modelsnew in ’26
First-ever external round — $7.4B at $50B+ — after years funded solely by the High-Flyer hedge fund.
6Zhipu AI (Z.ai)listed$41B
Foundation Models15× since ’23
First frontier lab to IPO — HKEX debut Jan 2026 at ~$7B, then a retail-fuelled rally to ~$41B.
Robotics98× since ’23
Series C at $39B — a 15× markup over its 2024 Series B, on humanoid robots yet to ship at scale.
Foundation Models6.4× since ’24
$32B with no product, no revenue and no roadmap; Nvidia added $5B at the same mark Jul 2026.
9Anysphere (Cursor)$29.3B
Apps & Agents12× since ’24
Series D at $29.3B on ~$2B ARR; SpaceX announced a $60B all-stock acquisition Jun 2026.
10Scale AI$29B
Infra & Data8.3× since ’20
Meta's $14.3B for a 49% non-voting stake implied $29B — no mark has printed since.
11Reflection AI$27.5B
Foundation Models3.4× since ’25
'America's open-source lab' — $2.5B at $25B pre-money, backed by Nvidia and JPMorgan.
12Cognition$26B
Apps & Agents13× since ’24
$1B Series D at $26B; 89% of the code committed at the company is now written by its own agent, Devin.
13Cerebras$23.1B
Infra & Data9.6× since ’20
$1B round at $23.1B after shelving its 2024 IPO filing — wafer-scale chips for the inference boom.
Apps & Agents192× since ’23
$121M to $23B in under three years — roughly 190× — riding the AI-search wave.
Foundation Models67× since ’23
Kimi maker; $2B Meituan-led round at $20B+ as open-source demand surged.
16Sierra$15.8B
Apps & Agents3.5× since ’24
Bret Taylor's customer-agent company — $950M Series E at $15.8B on ~$200M ARR.
17Mistral AI$13.7B
Foundation Models6.9× since ’23
Europe's frontier lab — Series C at €11.7B; a €20B round was in talks mid-2026 but had not closed.
18OpenEvidence$12B
Apps & Agents2× since ’25
'ChatGPT for doctors' — doubled to $12B in three months on ~$300M annualized revenue.
Foundation Modelsflat since ’25
Mira Murati's lab — history's largest seed round; a $50B re-price attempt found no takers.
20Harvey$11B
Apps & Agents15× since ’23
Legal AI on ~$190M ARR — most of the AmLaw 100 are customers.
Apps & Agents110× since ’23
Voice AI — Series D tripled its mark to $11B in twelve months.
What the Shape Shows
$2.6T
Combined 2026 value
The 21 companies together — up from three of them even having a priced mark in 2020.
16 of 21
Founded 2021 or later
Most of the leaderboard did not exist when GPT-3 shipped. Only Databricks, Scale and Cerebras carry a 2020 mark.
~965×
Anthropic’s run
From a roughly $1B Series A in 2021 to a $965B Series H in May 2026 — overtaking OpenAI on the way.
$0 → $50B
DeepSeek’s single point
Self-funded by a hedge fund until Jun 2026, when its first outside round instantly priced it in the global top five.

Methodology: private companies are marked at their last closed funding round, tender or secondary sale — they only reprice when a deal actually closes, so flat segments are carried marks, not stagnation. Zhipu AI is listed (HKEX 2513, Jan 2026); its 2026 figure is a market cap. Announced-but-unclosed deals (Databricks at $188B, Mistral at €20B, SpaceX’s $60B offer for Cursor) are noted on the cards but not plotted. Scope is AI-native companies: excluded are public tech giants, subsidiaries such as Waymo, defense-first Anduril ($61B), MiniMax (listed, ~$8.7B — below the cutoff) and Poolside (round unconfirmed). Figures compiled from funding-round reporting, Aug 2026.