The artificial intelligence (AI) industry has undergone rapid transformation in the past few years and especially so in the past 12 months. The growth of the nascent industry has been intriguing, with many watching the “Great AI Race” as established companies and innovative startups go head to head to build the “fastest”, “biggest”, “smartest”, or “most cost effective” solution. Which companies will emerge as market leaders? Will others fail to innovate and fall behind in their journey? In this blog, learn more about the great AI race, key market players, and the rapid transformation of the AI industry in 2025.

The Great AI Race in 2025

The way that AI systems are developed, deployed, and integrated are emerging as key differentiators as various established and new companies are taking on this ever-evolving field. While AI chatbots were the hot button topic of 2023 and 2024, we’re now seeing companies specialize in various fields of AI – OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are still pursuing AI chatbots but are also developing AI models for use with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Others like SambaNova, Groq, and Cerebras are tackling the hardware side of AI, allowing for other companies to host their models on servers that run more efficiently and cost-effectively.

The following are some of the startups that have become key players in the great AI race, taking on giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and IBM.

OpenAI

A MicroVentures portfolio company, OpenAI was seen by many to be a frontrunner in the AI race. Releasing its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in November 2022, OpenAI was one of the first companies to bring AI and the topic of chatbots to the dinner table for those previously not familiar with the industry. While other entrants have challenged OpenAI for the top spot, it still remains a formidable opponent but has lost some of the early momentum it had claimed.

OpenAI Highlights

Despite the challengers, OpenAI still closed the largest venture round of all time in October 2024, raising $6.6B at a valuation of $157B.[1] This made it the third most valuable private company in the world, only behind SpaceX and ByteDance (the owner of TikTok). Continuously releasing new updates and founder and CEO Sam Altman teasing “incredible stuff” being released over the next few months on X,[2] OpenAI expects revenue to reach $11.6B by the end of 2025.[3]

Government Involvement

OpenAI has also been intertwined with the Trump administration as it lobbies for government guardrails to be removed from the industry. Additionally, OpenAI has partnered with Oracle and SoftBank to form a joint venture investing up to $500B in AI infrastructure in the Stargate project, with Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, and Masayoshi Son all highlighting Trumps’ involvement in helping make the project possible.

OpenAI continues to be a major player in the great AI race with technological advancements and government involvement serving as foundations for their growth.

Anthropic

Also a MicroVentures portfolio company, Anthropic may be more recognizable by the name of its AI chatbot, Claude. Released in March 2023, Claude stands as a main competitor to ChatGPT, but general online sentiment reads that Claude may be superior to ChatGPT for specific use cases, mainly coding. Either way, Anthropic has made a strong name for itself in the AI space, surpassing $875M in annualized revenue in January 2025, an increase of more than 800% since 2023.[4]

Anthropic Highlights

With $8B in backing from Amazon, Anthropic is well poised in the great AI race. In fact, Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI employees and has the ultimate goal of building safe and reliable AI systems. Anthropic has made a name for itself in the enterprise space, with notable customers including Notion, Coinbase, Quora, and Slack and notable partnerships with Palantir, Amazon, and the U.S. government.

While some wouldn’t consider Anthropic to be a standout leader in the space, it has consistently been a major player in the industry, highlighting safety initiatives, allowing for fast and effective coding, and high-order mathematics.

xAI

Another MicroVentures portfolio company, xAI is Elon Musk’s, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla and the owner of X (formerly Twitter), AI venture. Focused on “truth-seeking” AI, xAI aims to develop AI capable of advanced mathematical reasoning while bringing in elements of humor and wit. Musk made headlines recently with the news that xAI was acquiring the social network formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought in October 2022. The two companies were already integrated, with xAI’s chatbot Grok existing natively on X and pulling real-time data and information from the platform to support responses to chatbot questions.

xAI Highlights

This AI company has focused on the software side of things but announced plans in May 2024 to build the world’s largest supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. Additionally, it is collaborating with Nvidia on a project backed by BlackRock, Microsoft, and Abu Dhabi AI investment group MGX to raise up to $100B to support AI development. xAI’s venture into the AI hardware side of things shows how AI companies are diversifying their offerings to remain competitive in this ever-evolving landscape.

SambaNova

While the other companies in this blog are primarily focused on AI software, systems, and deployment, SambaNova, a MicroVentures portfolio company, is primarily focused on building the hardware to make these AI systems run. Holding key partnerships with Accenture and Meta, SambaNova’s specialty is speed, enabling users to access Meta’s Llama models and others and fine-tune and manage the models in-house. It develops AI chips and dataflow architecture designed for enterprises and governments to enhance their AI solutions.

SambaNova Highlights

Founded by industry veterans from Stanford and Oracle, SambaNova has been more of a background player, with its name only really being mentioned by those in the industry. However, its traction and milestones speak for themselves, as it released a chip in September 2023 that the company claimed was 30x more efficient than existing chips. Its full-stack solution is serving as a way to support the AI industry and enable companies to further their AI efforts.

Groq

Groq, another MicroVentures portfolio company, is also serving more in the full-stack solution area, focusing on real-time inference solutions to support the generative AI chatbots used on a daily basis. Previously focused on hardware sales, Groq transitioned to its current niche of AI cloud services, supporting developers to build AI applications on models from Meta, OpenAI, Google, and other AI leaders. Its GroqCloud solution has been used by more than 1 million developers and as of February 2025, Groq is expanding its AI inference infrastructure through a $1.5B commitment from Saudi Arabia.[5]

Groq Highlights

This AI company’s place in the race is quickly growing, as it secured a $640M Series D round in August 2024. The $2.8B valuation it received was a ~143% increase from the $1.15B valuation it received in its March 2024 Series C round.[6] Groq’s growth has been increasing since pivoting to AI cloud services and it claims to achieve speeds 10x faster than OpenAI’s ChatGPT and ChatGPT-4o.

Cerebras

The final company we’ll be mentioning in this blog, Cerebras, has been called Nvidia’s most serious competitor by Nasdaq.[7] Also focused on AI hardware, Cerebras has made a name for itself designing processors, building AI systems, and developing the software to power supercomputers for AI training and inference. It has grown so rapidly that it filed a Form S-1 with the SEC in September 2024 to pursue an initial public offering. While the IPO has not come yet, it reported in March 2025 that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFUS) has completed its review of the company’s involvement with United Arab Emirates company Group 42, a key step towards making its public debut.

Cerebras Highlights

As part of its IPO filing, we had the opportunity to learn a lot about the traction Cerebras has seen, recording $69.8M in revenue in Q2 2024 alone. This marked increased growth from recording $78.7M in revenue in all of 2023 and $24.6M in all of 2022.[8] Holding key partnerships with Perplexity, the Mayo Clinic, Aramco, and Qualcomm, Cerebras’ novel technology of AI chips has helped position it well in the AI race.

Key AI Trends in 2025

With OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, SambaNova, Groq, and Cerebras continually innovating to keep up in the great AI race, there are a few trends that these companies, and investors, may want to keep an eye on as the industry continues to evolve.

The Rise of Agentic AI

One prominent shift has been the transition from AI chatbots to AI agents – instead of needing in depth prompting to answer questions like chatbots, agents also have the ability to take actions autonomously. From booking flights, managing emails, and negotiating contracts, the shift towards agentic AI has marked a key shift in the industry that companies may need to continually innovate upon to keep up in the industry.

Real-Time Multimodal AI

A historic barrier for AI has been the time needed to train AI models. For example, when ChatGPT came out in November 2022, it had been trained on data up to September 2021, leaving a gap spanning over a year of data and knowledge. The next prominent update was trained through October 2023, and as of April 2025 for the free version of ChatGPT, the chatbot is only trained up through June 2024. The lapse between training knowledge and deployment has been a true barrier for those seeking real-time AI updates. As we move through 2025 and models are being able to be trained faster due to innovation in AI hardware and training systems, the next trend could be real-time AI and responses.

Efficiency and Speed

As AI proliferates everyday lives, efficiency and speed have become a key point of interest for many users and startups. And with efficiency and speed come costs. Sam Altman stated in April 2025 that the simple pleasantries of saying “please” and “thank you” have been costing the company millions in dollars.[9] As 2025 moves on, a key point of interest appears to be balancing efficiency and speed with cost.

Government Regulation

As mentioned earlier, the Trump administration has stated that it takes an “AI-friendly” viewpoint to furthering the industry. In the era of deepfakes and misinformation, government regulation may play a key role in balancing regulation with innovation. At what point does regulation need to step in to protect the public from being fed incorrect information from AI chatbots and agents? Will AI companies be able to innovate around these regulations to keep up with the times and the race?

Final Thoughts

With how fast the AI industry has been evolving, it appears that the only constant is change. As trends evolve, companies innovative, new use cases emerge, and AI grows, we can reasonably expect that the AI of 2025 will look very different from the AI of 2026 and 2027. If history can serve as any indicator, no one would have been able to predict how far AI would proliferate into everyday society when ChatGPT came out in 2022.

It will be fascinating to see how the industry continues to grow, what new opportunities emerge, and which companies could emerge as the winners of the great AI race.

Want to learn more about key industries to keep an eye on? Check out the following blogs to learn more:

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[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/openai-raises-6-6b-and-is-now-valued-at-157b/

[2] https://x.com/sama/status/1908570592661692761

[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-sees-116-billion-revenue-next-year-offers-thrive-chance-invest-again-2025-2024-09-28/

[4] https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-raise-2-bln-deal-valuing-ai-startup-60-bln-wsj-reports-2025-01-07/

[5] https://groq.com/news_press/saudi-arabia-announces-1-5-billion-expansion-to-fuel-ai-powered-economy-with-ai-tech-leader-groq/

[6] https://groq.com/news_press/groq-raises-640m-to-meet-soaring-demand-for-fast-ai-inference/

[7] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/these-2-stocks-are-nvidias-most-serious-competitors-are-they-even-close

[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/30/cerebras-files-for-ipo.html

[9] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/04/22/please-thank-you-chatgpt-openai-energy-costs/83207447007/

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