Notable AI Companies of 2021

Cool AI Startups worth checking out!

Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash

Introduction

What is this article? This article is a collection of neat and relevant AI companies that I’ve found in the year 2021. This article doesn’t attempt to vouch for any of the companies listed. If a company is listed, it only means that I think they’re worth highlighting (I give my reasons for each company listed). The list is sorted in alphabetical order by company name.

Why did I write this? The AI space has become an ocean of companies. I thought it would be interesting to try and list out every company that I found. This process has helped me to sort out some thoughts and also keep track of some of the companies I’ve come across (never know when this list of names could come in handy). I mainly wrote this list for my own bookmarking, but I figured why not publish it for others to read as well.

Why do these companies make the list? First off, mainly because I found them. Secondly, most have an impressive client list. Third, most are advertised as a data-first platform. As they say “garbage in, garbage out”. And lastly, most of them have a lot of services. Another reason a company could make the list is — I think they’re doing something really different with AI. Again, this doesn’t mean that I vouch for the company, it only means that I think they’re worth highlighting.

Note that I’ll continually update this article throughout the year if I gather more information. This article was last updated on September 7, 2021. Happy reading!

Appen

• Website: https://appen.com/
• Focus: Reliable Training Data
• Short Description: “Training data isn’t labeled or collected on its own. Human intelligence is required to create and annotate reliable training data. Our high-quality training data is possible thanks to our:” Platform auto-labeling, crowdsourcing, and company expertise.

Clarifai

• Website: https://www.clarifai.com/
• Short Description: What is Clarifai? Well, if you look at their website, they almost sound like a data science platform, so why are they in this article? Although they claim you can create and train custom ML models, it seems they’re more focused on fine-tuning pre-trained models. Clarifai tries to simplify the data science process by breaking it down into data labeling, quick model fine-tuning and then deployment. Many of their products just focus on calling their pre-trained models for use case needs. In short, Clarifai tries to make data science more software developer and project manager focused than data scientist focused.

Eightfold.ai

• Website: Eightfold.ai
• Short Description: Eightfold.ai is an “AI-powered talent intelligence platform”. This platform is aimed at helping companies “transform how [they] hire and retain a diverse global workforce”.
• References: https://www.comcastlabsconnect.com/phlai-2021

LabelBox

• Website: https://labelbox.com/
• Short Description: It’s pretty much in the name, LabelBox focuses on data labeling, as well as other methodologies around data labeling (for e.g., active learning).

Lightyear.ai

• Website: https://lightyear.ai/
• Short Description: Lightyear.ai is a telecom quoting tool that allows you to buy and manage your business telecom services (internet, voice, WAN, data center) through a single platform.

Pandio

• Website: https://pandio.com/
• Short Description: Pandio is a company with an interesting mix of products. They sell an enterprise distributed messaging service, a distributed SQL service, and an ML pipeline framework. At its core, it appears that Pandio is a data processing company that has a focus on AI Orchestration.

PlainSight.ai

• Website: https://plainsight.ai/
• Short Description: Plain sight is a company that aims at accelerating the deployment of vision AI systems by focusing heavily on automation, starting with data labeling through model building and all the way to deployment.

Rival

• Website: https://www.getrival.com/
• Focus: Skill Development. Currently focused on sports, specifically soccer.
• Platform: Mobile (iOS)
• Short Description: Using AI (e.g. image detection) and gamification to help people learn new skills. This is one of the few companies on this list that is not a B2B company helping other companies leverage AI.
• References: https://datastandard.io/podcast/the-data-standard-audio-experience-with-catherine-tao-and-guest-elliot-stern/

Snorkel.ai

• Website: https://snorkel.ai/
• Short Description: Snorkel was an API for generating target data for modeling by turning domain knowledge into simple functions that could be aggregated into a modeling target. Sounds like the creators of Snorkel took their open-source framework and launch a new commercial product called Snorkel Flow which is an extension of the original Snorkel.

Super.ai

• Website: https://super.ai
• Short Description: Data labeling and data quality for machine learning — That’s the name of the game for super.ai

TheHive.ai

• Website: https://thehive.ai/
• Focus: Data annotation and pre-trained models.
• Short Description: Leverage pre-trained models or develop your own models on your own data with the help of their data labeling services.