CB Insights AI 100

An annual unranked list of 100 private AI companies that CB Insights considers most promising, grouped into market categories. Investors and corporate scouts use it as a deal-sourcing and trend signal; winners use it as a credential.

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CB Insights AI 100

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Editions

Edition	Published	Top of the list	On record
2026	May 5, 2026	Not recorded	100
2025	April 24, 2025	Not recorded	98 of 100
2024	April 2, 2024	Not recorded	1 of 100
2023	June 20, 2023	Not recorded	52 of 100
2022	May 17, 2022	Not recorded	7 of 100
2021	April 7, 2021	Not recorded	24 of 100
2020	March 3, 2020	Not recorded	100
2019	February 6, 2019	Not recorded	100
2018	December 12, 2017	Not recorded	100
2017 Method changed	January 11, 2017	Not recorded	100

How the ranking works

CB Insights' research team selects winners using its own datasets: deal activity, industry partnerships, team and investor strength, patent or R&D activity, hiring momentum, and its proprietary Mosaic (predictive health) and Commercial Maturity scores, supplemented by software buyer interviews and analyst briefings. Early editions (2017 to 2019) also used company-submitted data and interview responses.

The list is unranked and grouped by category (for example infrastructure, horizontal and vertical AI; physical AI added in 2026). The pool considered grew from roughly 1,000 to 1,650 applicants in the first editions to 17,000+ (2025) and 40,000+ (2026). Exact weights are not published.

Unranked list: Inclusion is the honor. No positions are published. Early editions drew on applications and nominations (1,650+ in 2017); recent editions screen CB Insights' own database (40,000+ companies in 2026). No fee was found. CB Insights sells data subscriptions and gates the downloadable list behind a lead-capture form, and winners are prompted to issue templated press releases.

Read the publisher’s methodology

How far to trust it

Superscout grades every ranking on six criteria, each scored 0 to 2. CB Insights AI 100 scores 7 of 12, grade C.

Transparency 1/2: Inputs are listed but weights and scores are not published.
Independence 1/2: No fee, but the list doubles as marketing for CB Insights' paid data.
Evidence 1/2: Mixes database signals with analyst judgment.
Stability 1/2: Inputs and candidate pool changed materially across editions.
Coverage 1/2: Top slice of private AI companies.
Track record 2/2: 10 editions.

History

First published January 2017 at CB Insights' Innovation Summit; the second edition came out in December 2017 labeled 2018, and later editions moved to spring (February 2019, March 2020, April 2021, May 2022, June 2023, April 2024, April 2025, May 2026). The selection shifted over time from application-driven to database-driven screening with proprietary scores.

How it is received

The list is widely publicized by winners through near-identical press releases distributed by CB Insights' media team. CB Insights cites its own follow-on statistics (64% of winners across five cohorts raised follow-on rounds versus 31% of peers) as validation; that claim is self-reported. Because the publisher sells access to the underlying data and gates the full list, outside verification of selection is limited.

Strengths

Covers early-stage companies that larger lists miss.
Grounded in a large proprietary private-company dataset.
Categorized by market, useful for scouting.
Nine-year track record with consistent 100-company format.

Weaknesses

Unranked, so it cannot distinguish among winners.
Weights and scoring are proprietary.
Full list sits behind a lead-capture form.
Publisher has a commercial interest in promoting its data products.

Open questions

Facts not verified yet. They stay visible so they are not mistaken for settled facts.

Two 2025 winners could not be recovered from the spreadsheet copy.
Full lists for 2021 to 2024 are gated; partial names for 2021 and 2022 come from company press releases and CB's report text.
2023 partial list comes from a single secondary site and was not cross-checked name by name.
2024 publication date: CB page shows April 2, 2024, while a Scribd copy of the data is dated March 25, 2024.
2017 list prints 'Elitic, Inc.', presumably Enlitic; kept as published.

Superscout describes CB Insights AI 100 independently from the publisher’s own pages and outside coverage, linked below. The rankings belong to CB Insights.

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Sources and known limits

Last reviewed Sep 23, 2026.