CB Insights

The future of the workforce is deeply entwined with AI. And enterprise AI agent startups, mostly early-stage, are rushing to seize the opportunity. The landscape is also seeing rapidly rising levels of investment from bullish VCs with investors pouring $2B into these startups in the last 2 years. But based on CB Insights Commercial Maturity data, 93% of companies are still in the early stages of building or deploying their solutions. No dominant winners have emerged yet, and plenty of companies reckon they have a shot. Taken together, these data points suggest the ecosystem is on the verge of another growth spurt and enterprises will soon have a ballooning number of agent offerings to parse through.

We launched the Future Tech Hotshots — a list of 52 emerging tech startups with high momentum and potential for a major exit. While we’ve created this list with an eye toward a 5- to 10-year exit timeline, some of these startups are more likely than the rest to get acquired in the next 2 years, according to CB Insights’ Exit Probability algorithm. In particular, 3 startups — Aliro (cyber), Laudio (healthcare), and Mavenoid (support automation) — are in the top 10% of all private companies eligible for scoring on the CBI platform. These likelihoods are based on analysis of historical data of similar companies. Get the full list of startups, key takeaways, and analysis here: https://cbi.team/3AMgebg

How can we win in the era of generative AI? It's the question looming larger than any other for countless companies around the globe. Big tech is scrambling to harness its potential. Corporate attention to the tech has skyrocketed. And many fear that failing to adapt will mean being outcompeted by the companies that do. So here's your ultimate guide to genAI disruption. 120+ page of data and analysis on where genAI is headed, big tech activity, the players to watch, and more: https://cbi.team/4eo7ciY

We surveyed 50 corporate strategy leaders to identify the challenges they face in driving influence across their organizations. One of their biggest pain points? 60% of teams don’t have clearly defined KPIs to measure success or tie their efforts to concrete results. The other most persistent challenges are 1) getting alignment across the org (54%) and 2) data issues, such as inaccurate or unavailable datasets (40%). The most influential corporate strategy teams that overcame these obstacles have some key tactics in common. See what they are in this free report: https://cbi.team/3B9PTnn

The number of deals to AI startups backed by US big tech companies & their strategic venture arms jumped 50% year-over-year. This is the next big super trend, much like the internet and mobile phones, and big tech is committed to not just not missing it but to driving it. They are all in on genAI. We map out all of the 75+ AI startups big tech backed in 2023 here: https://cbi.team/3XGFuZe

Behind the scenes, Sam Altman is a remarkably active investor. Several of the companies Altman has invested in also have relationships with OpenAI. For instance, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51M on AI chips from Rain in 2019. Altman had previously invested in the company’s seed round. Meanwhile, Speak, whose Series A round Altman backed in 2022, has since raised successive rounds from OpenAI’s Startup Fund. Explore Altman’s investment web: https://cbi.team/3MKkU3W

Salesforce has done 3 acquisitions in the last 2 months — more than it did all of last year. Its latest is data management firm Own (fka OwnBackup), which it bought last week for $1.9B. Salesforce previously partnered with Own, as well as invested in the company via Salesforce Ventures. The “try before you buy” approach is a hallmark of Salesforce’s strategy. Mining CB Insights data reveals that nearly half of Salesforce’s acquisitions since 2018 had previously partnered with or received an investment from Salesforce — and many more were in its platform ecosystem. We deconstructed the strategy here: https://cbi.team/4gr4Cuk

As the energy sector faces new pressures and opportunities, major players and investors are shifting their focus. In this webinar, learn the trends shaping the future of energy, strategies of key industry players, and the markets and startups our expert is tracking: https://cbi.team/3zgWAUo

Business-to-business (B2B) payments are finally going digital. Companies offering B2B payments solutions are digitizing and automating formerly manual processes like: ▪️ Creating invoices ▪️ Processing payments ▪️ Analyzing payments data From cross-border payments platforms to spend management, discover 98 tech vendors digitizing B2B payments in this market map: https://cbi.team/3Z3ehkF

Nvidia is the third most valuable company in the world, behind Microsoft and Apple. To bolster its leadership position and keep ahead of AI computing competitors like AMD and Intel, Nvidia has forged relationships with companies across the AI landscape. Meanwhile, with its venture arm, it's backed 38 startups this year so far alone. We analyze its growth strategy here: https://cbi.team/3zg6HbQ