ValuationsMarks, multiples & secondaries
Bessemer and Newcomer Publish the AI 100, Ranking Anthropic and OpenAI First Among 100 Private AI Companies
Bessemer Venture Partners and Newcomer ranked 100 private AI companies, valued together at roughly $3.5–3.6 trillion, with Anthropic first and OpenAI second. Value is heavily concentrated in frontier labs, and the scoring cannot be reproduced from published data.
From the Newcomer article of November 12, 2026 and cited sources: Value is concentrated at the top. [1] [12]
SOURCES[1] Newcomer: The AI 100 newcomer.co[12] BVP: AI 100 benchmarks bvp.com
AT Pulse research deskPublished · Updated · 5 min read · AI-assisted analysisAI-assisted, not human-edited. Methodology Corrections Who owns this site
- Original source
- Newcomer article, independent perspective
- Brief by
- AT Pulse research desk AI-assisted; publisher and contact on the desk page
- When
- November 12, 2026 article published
- Covered
- Nov 13 edition
- Evidence
- 17 sources across 15 sites
StrongHow it’s measured
Substack · 47 likes · 1 comment
Reach blends public engagement (views, likes, comments, shares, stars) from the platforms where the story or its original source lives: YouTube, Hacker News, GitHub, Substack and similar. A video and the article written from its transcript share one score, taken from the video. Platforms with no data are left out rather than counted as zero, and the age of a story never lowers its score.
Value is concentrated at the top. Frontier labs make up 9% of the names but about 55% of the list's combined value, and the top 10 (Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe, Waymo, Cognition, Anduril, Ramp, Fireworks and ElevenLabs) hold roughly 70%. [1] [12]
Rank is not the same as valuation. Scores weight market leadership at 35%, estimated valuation at 30%, operating metrics at 20%, and people and culture at 15%. As a result, Cognition at $48B ranks sixth, above Anduril at $90B, and Isomorphic Labs at $1.8B ranks 14th. [12] [13]
Investors and buyers are likely to cite the list as a benchmark. However, its averages of 480% ARR growth and a 57x revenue multiple rest on unaudited company data. Anthropic's IPO will give the first public-market check on frontier-lab valuations.
Research is done. Writing the dossier now: the list is checked against Bessemer's own methodology page and independent coverage of the deals it mentions.
Executive brief
Bessemer Venture Partners helped rank the inaugural AI 100, and its Fal award has a conflict of interest. Bessemer led Fal's $1.3B Series F nine days before the list came out, and the list named Fal "Hottest Recent Fundraise" (Let's Data Science). Bessemer and Newcomer released the list on November 12 at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit. They value its 100 private companies at about $3.5–3.6T. Anthropic is #1 and OpenAI is #2 (Newcomer). Anthropic plans to list on Nasdaq on November 19 at a target valuation of about $1.4T (Yahoo Finance).
What changed and event timeline
OpenAI shuts down the Sora app
OpenAI announced it would shut down the standalone Sora video app and its API. Reports cited compute costs and weak in-app revenue. Newcomer says this opened room for video startups (;).
Prometheus reaches a $41B valuation
The engineering-AI lab co-founded by Jeff Bezos raised a $12B Series B, bringing total funding to $18.2B, with no product released (;).
TypeSafe raises $870M
TypeSafe announced a Series A led by a16z at a $7.5B valuation, 24 days after launching its Jev model (;).
Fal raises a Series F led by Bessemer
The round was $1.3B at a $16B valuation, double Fal's April valuation. Nvidia, Sound Ventures and T. Rowe Price also invested ().
Stripe closes its OpenRouter deal
Stripe announced the deal in August at about $8B. It closed at a reported $7.5B (;).
The AI 100 is published
It replaces Bessemer's Cloud 100. Frontier labs make up 9% of the names but 55% of the list's value (;).
Capabilities and access
- The full ranked list, with valuations, is at ai100.newcomer.co. Bessemer's benchmark report is by Byron Deeter, Talia Goldberg and others.
- The top 10 are Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe, Waymo, Cognition, Anduril, Ramp, Fireworks and ElevenLabs.
- Jev, from TypeSafe (#52), returns model decisions to code as typed values instead of text (Implicator).
Read the full section
- The full ranked list, with valuations, is at ai100.newcomer.co. Bessemer's benchmark report is by Byron Deeter, Talia Goldberg and others.
- The top 10 are Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe, Waymo, Cognition, Anduril, Ramp, Fireworks and ElevenLabs. Together they hold about 70% of the list's value (BVP).
- Jev, from TypeSafe (#52), returns model decisions to code as typed values instead of text (Implicator).
Technical analysis for researchers and developers
- How companies were scored: market leadership 35%, estimated valuation 30%, operating metrics 20%, people and culture 15%.
- Rank does not follow valuation: Cognition ($48B) is #6, above Anduril ($90B) at #7. Isomorphic Labs ($1.8B) is #14 (AI 100 site).
- Where the infrastructure is: inference providers (Fireworks, Baseten, Fal, Modal, Together) and model routing rank highly.
Read the full section
- How companies were scored: market leadership 35%, estimated valuation 30%, operating metrics 20%, people and culture 15%. The inputs come from company data and PitchBook (BVP). The scores for each factor are not published, so outsiders cannot reproduce the ranking.
- Rank does not follow valuation: Cognition ($48B) is #6, above Anduril ($90B) at #7. Isomorphic Labs ($1.8B) is #14 (AI 100 site).
- Where the infrastructure is: inference providers (Fireworks, Baseten, Fal, Modal, Together) and model routing rank highly. OpenRouter says it routes more than 400 models and over 10T tokens per day (AI News).
Claims and evidence
- Anthropic: its S-1 reports $33.2B revenue for the first nine months of 2026 and a $1.3B operating loss.
- Fal: the round, its lead investor and the valuation were announced by the company. TechCrunch could not confirm that Fal validated it (Let's Data Science).
- Applied Intuition: Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the company is in talks to raise $1.5B or more at about $30B, led by General Catalyst (Bloomberg).
Read the full section
- Anthropic: its S-1 reports $33.2B revenue for the first nine months of 2026 and a $1.3B operating loss. IPO terms are $70–78 per share for 825M shares (Yahoo Finance). These figures come from a regulatory filing.
- Fal: the round, its lead investor and the valuation were announced by the company. The figure of more than $800M in annualized revenue came from a Bloomberg report. TechCrunch could not confirm that Fal validated it (Let's Data Science).
- Applied Intuition: Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the company is in talks to raise $1.5B or more at about $30B, led by General Catalyst (Bloomberg). The AI 100 site lists the company at $15B (AI 100).
- TypeSafe: the claim that Jev is "up to 100x" more cost-efficient comes from TypeSafe itself. Adoption claims have drawn scrutiny (Magica).
- List averages: 480% average ARR growth and a 57x revenue multiple, against 20x for the Cloud 100. Both rest on company data that has not been audited (BVP).
Context and prior work
Bessemer published the Cloud 100 every year from 2016 to 2025 (BVP Cloud 100). Newcomer argues the Cloud 100's stability was an illusion, because AI undermined investor confidence in SaaS. Former Cloud 100 names such as Celonis and Tanium are gone. Earlier-generation companies that repositioned around AI remain, including Stripe, Ramp and Canva (Newcomer).
Limitations, safety and contested findings
- Conflicts of interest: Bessemer led Fal's Series F. Its Talia Goldberg co-wrote Bessemer's 2025 Fal investment note (BVP) and presented the AI 100 analysis on stage.
- Internal inconsistencies: the article lists Baseten at #12 and the website at #11. The article gives Applied Intuition both #13 and #17.
- Valuations not backed by revenue: Newcomer itself flags Prometheus, Safe Superintelligence and Instinct as the riskiest names.
Read the full section
- Conflicts of interest: Bessemer led Fal's Series F. Its Talia Goldberg co-wrote Bessemer's 2025 Fal investment note (BVP) and presented the AI 100 analysis on stage. Bessemer's only disclosure is that some listed companies "may be" portfolio companies (BVP).
- Internal inconsistencies: the article lists Baseten at #12 and the website at #11. The article gives Applied Intuition both #13 and #17. The article puts total value at about $3.5T, while Bessemer says $3.6T.
- Valuations not backed by revenue: Newcomer itself flags Prometheus, Safe Superintelligence and Instinct as the riskiest names.
Business and practitioner implications
- Valuation reference points: Anthropic's IPO will give the first public-market price for a frontier lab.
- Stripe and OpenRouter: the deal places a payments company in the routing layer that decides which model handles a request.
- Video: rivalry among inference providers and OpenAI's exit from the Sora app favour Fal, ElevenLabs and Runway.
Read the full section
- Valuation reference points: Anthropic's IPO will give the first public-market price for a frontier lab. Its list valuation was $965B; the IPO target is about $1.4T (AI 100; Yahoo Finance).
- Stripe and OpenRouter: the deal places a payments company in the routing layer that decides which model handles a request. Teams that depend on OpenRouter should watch for changes in pricing and data policy.
- Video: rivalry among inference providers and OpenAI's exit from the Sora app favour Fal, ElevenLabs and Runway. Check vendor revenue claims independently before relying on them.