With AI becoming more desirable to businesses as it quickly develops, increasing numbers of startups are being born with the goal of building new ways to harness the technology.
Huge organisations have been born from the ground up, including OpenAI and Anthropic that now have access to large levels of funding and world-leading partnerships to advance the technology. These startup companies leverage the power of AI to handle increasing demand for the technology and adapt it to advance global innovation.
With this in mind, AI Magazine explores some of the current leading AI startups across Europe.
10. Transmetrics
Founder/s: Asparuh Koev
Founded year: 2013
Total funding: US$8.11m
Based in Bulgaria, Transmetrics was designed to optimise the supply chain. It aims to improve logistics planning and asset management by leveraging the power of predictive analytics, AI and machine learning.
Its approach automatically extracts data and uses AI tools to analyse, model and predict transport flows. As a result, the insights save time and resources and are able to solve supply chain challenges across various sectors, including fleet maintenance, linehaul planning and empty container management.
9. PhysicsX:
Founder/s: Robin Tuluie, PhD
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: US$32m
PhysicsX harnesses generative AI (Gen AI) to revolutionise engineering across key business sectors such as automotive, aerospace, renewables and materials production. The company is currently building AI and simulation engineering technologies to reinvent the design and operation of machines and products.
The focus of the startup is also to utilise AI to confront how applications are impacting the climate and human health. Some of its investors include industry giants such as Standard Investment, NGP Energy and Radius Capital.
8. Aleph Alpha
Founder/s: Jonas Andrulis and Samuel Weinbach.
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: US$500m
Germany-based Aleph Alpha offers a platform to help businesses and governments develop Gen AI tools and research. The tools include large language models (LLMs) that are trained in five languages and the ability to modify systems to suit the needs of specialised environments.
Aleph Alpha was founded by professionals who had previously worked at leading organisations like Apple, SAP and Deloitte. The company seeks to integrate AI into platforms and applications across various enterprise sectors to facilitate greater innovation and improve productivity.
Its June 2023 funding round saw the organisation backed from leading technology companies SAP SE, Earlybird Venture Capital and global chipmaker Nvidia.
7. TechWolf
Founder/s: Mikaël Wornoo, Andreas De Neve and Jeroen Van Hautte
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: US$12.m
TechWolf is an AI-based human resources technology solution that enables businesses to become more skills-based. It aims to offer businesses the tools needed to take on new and complex challenges throughout their operations.
By leveraging AI-driven skills intelligence, its Skill Engine tool connects existing systems via an application programming interface (API)-first approach to get an instant, up-to-date and unbiased view of skills and skills gaps of their employees in less than eight weeks.
6. Endel
Founder/s: Oleg Stavitsky, Protey Temen, Philipp Petrenko, Dmitry Evgrafov, Kirill Bulatsev, Dmitry Bezugly
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: US$21.1m
Endel is a paid generative music app that creates personalised sound environments to match user activities. The app provides preset modes for relaxation, focus, sleep and moving, in addition to reacting to time of the day, weather, heart rate and location to create unique compositions.
The startup harnesses a cross-platform ecosystem of AI-powered apps that creates what it describes as personalised functional soundscapes. Based in Berlin, Germany, Endel raised US$15m in Series B funding in 2022.
5. Graphcore
Founder/s: Nigel Toon, Simon Knowles
Founded year: 2016
Total funding: US$2.8bn total valuation
Graphcore Limited is a British semiconductor company that develops accelerators for AI and machine learning. It has introduced a massively parallel Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) that holds the complete machine learning model inside the processor.
The company’s IPU technology aims to revolutionise various business sectors by accelerating AI applications to achieve advancements in society, including enhancing drug discovery and supporting decarbonisation.
Having gained US$222m in Series E funding in 2020, Graphcore’s total valuation is now US$2.8bn.
4. Stability.ai
Founder/s: Mohammad Emad Mostaque
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: US$101m
Stability.ai is one of the world’s leading open source Gen AI companies. It aims to deliver breakthrough, open-access AI models with minimal resource requirements in imaging, language, code and audio.
Aiming to democratise AI and build a global foundation to achieve humanity’s full potential, Stability.ai holds a unique vision and approach to AI with its openness. It aims to foster a culture of trust, transparency, innovation and integrity with AI.
The London-based company is currently one of the leading AI startup companies in Europe. In 2022, it achieved unicorn status when it achieved a US$1bn valuation in 2022.
3. DeepL
Founder/s: Dr. Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski
Founded year: 2009
Total funding: US$100m
DeepL Translator is a neural machine translation service that was launched in August 2017 and is owned by German-based DeepL SE. The real-time language translation programme made it to unicorn status when it secured US$106m funding in January 2023, which included backing from Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners.
The programme translates texts using artificial neural networks that are trained on millions of translated texts. Its creators have placed great emphasis on the targeted acquisition of special training data to help its network achieve a higher quality of translation.
2. Mistral AI
Founder/s: Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix.
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: US$2bn total valuation
Mistral AI is a French Gen AI model maker that made headlines in June 2023 when it secured €105m (US$112m) in its seed round from investors such as Headline, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bpifrance.
The company has made several notable business partnerships to advance AI, including Snowflake in March 2024 to democratise access to the technology. Both organisations are working to bring industry-leading AI language models to businesses to harness safer Gen AI technology.
Mistral AI’s latest and most powerful model, Mistral Large, is available in the Snowflake Data Cloud for customers to securely harness Gen AI with their enterprise data and build applications quickly and easily.
1. Synthesia
Founder/s: Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Matthias Niessner, Lourdes Agapito
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: US$157m
Synthesia is a synthetic media generation platform that aims to harness AI to democratise video creation. The video maker allows users to create talking head videos, or avatars, with text inputs and a short sample video of an actor.
Founded in 2017 by a team of AI researchers and entrepreneurs, its Gen AI tools aim to empower users to make video content - without cameras, microphones or studios. It is designed to radically change the process of content creation and unleash human creativity for good.
Based in London, its user base includes the likes of Amazon, Tiffany & Co, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Reuters, Accenture and the BBC. The company passed the US$1bn valuation mark in June 2023 and earned unicorn business status.
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