Frontier model labs
The few companies that train the largest models and sell them through apps and APIs.
Who is making money
The companies earning or raising real money in this part of AI. Suppliers are marked: they sell to the builders rather than to end users.
ChatGPT and its API
About $13B revenue in 2025, against about $34B of costs (reported)
Open profileClaude and Claude Code. Strongest with businesses and coders
Annualised revenue run rate above $65B at the end of July 2026, reported from an investor update (Aug 2026)
Open profileBuilds the Gemini models through Google DeepMind and sells them through Search, Cloud and the Gemini app.
25% of AI chip supply (Epoch AI)
Open profileOwns about 27 percent of OpenAI and sells Azure cloud and Copilot tools that run on its models.
20M+ users (2025)
Open profileRuns Meta Superintelligence Labs and builds its Muse models, with the Llama line now scaled back.
Sales more than tripled (H1 2025)
Open profileInvests in Anthropic and sells it cloud compute through AWS.
5% of AI chip supply (Epoch AI)
Open profileEuropean lab
About $14B valuation (Sep 2025)
Open profileex-OpenAI founders
Annualised run rate above $100M, self-reported and unaudited
Open profileLab that aims to build frontier open-weight models in the US, backed by Nvidia.
$8B after a $2B round led by Nvidia in October 2025. Talks at $25B reported in 2026
Open profileChinese research lab that releases its strongest models as open weights.
About 475M yuan (about $70.7M) in the first seven months of 2026 (The Information, reported)
Open profileChinese lab that makes chat, voice and video models, with most app revenue from overseas subscriptions.
About $30.5M in 2024 (filings, reported). About $53.4M in the nine months to September 2025 (reported)
Open profileChinese lab behind the Kimi chatbot and the Kimi open models.
Annual recurring revenue above $200M in April 2026 (reported)
Open profileBuilds the Grok models and the X platform, and is now part of SpaceX.
About $500M annualised run rate in 2026 (reported)
Open profileChinese lab that makes the GLM models, mostly sold to enterprises, and is now listed in Hong Kong.
About $44.4M in 2024 (filings, reported)
Open profileResearch lab founded by Ilya Sutskever that aims to build safe superhuman AI and has no public product yet.
No revenue reported. No model, API or product released as of July 2026
Open profileWhere the money flows
Companies, developers and consumers pay the labs. The labs pay clouds, chip makers and data companies, mostly with investors' money.
Invested in Anthropic and committed compute through AWS
pasqualepillitteri.itInvests in Anthropic and supplies TPU compute
wam.aeHolds about 27 percent of OpenAI on an as-converted basis
om.co- OpenAIpaysMicrosoft$250B Azure commitment from the October 2025 deal. Payouts capped in April 2026 (reported total of $38B)
Buys Azure cloud services under an agreed commitment, and pays a revenue share
om.co Reported to be in talks to invest in the lab
letsdatascience.com
The openings
Gaps still open in this area, from ones a small business could take to ones only giants can play.
- Small business Build on the labs as a reseller, integrator or agent builder rather than competing
- Startup money A regional or sovereign lab (local language, data kept in-country)
- Giants only A new frontier lab
Reported revenue may include resellers' spend, the labs still burn huge sums, and valuations depend on the funding continuing.
Sources: pinggy.io, noqta.tn, cryptobriefing.com
The map updates three times a week.
241 companies across 25 areas, 62 money flows and 89 openings so far. New research lands every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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