Research-driven, industry-sourced list derived from investors who have put several billion into the sector.

The methodology for the IA40 is based on Madrona's experience investing in founders and engaging with researchers involved in AI and Machine Learning for over a decade, and inspired by a research and survey methodology developed by Wing.vc. This list was compiled by and voted on by experts in the space: investors who are funding the next generation of intelligent application companies, technology companies, and a leading investment bank.  

Phase 1
Building the voting list

In 2024, we received over 380 private company nominations from over 70 venture investors at 54 top-tier venture capital and corporate investment firms. Each judge had the opportunity to nominate companies for consideration in each category. The Madrona team vetted the companies to ensure they met the definition of intelligent applications.

Phase 2
Voting

After we collected the nominations, we asked the same venture capital investors to vote on their top 5 companies in each category (early, mid, late, and enabler). Each venture capital investor was limited to voting for only 2 of their portfolio companies.

Phase 3
Tabulation

We tabulated the votes from investors by category and leveraged PitchBook’s “Venture Exit Predictor Tool.” Their model considers and weighs many data points, including the average deal size of each round, number of employees, and number of investors. We weighted the venture community votes and PitchBook’s Venture Exit Predictor Opportunity Score to produce a final composite score that resulted in the 40 winners and 5 rising star enablers.

Defining Intelligent Applications

We define application intelligence as the process of using machine learning models embedded in applications that use both historical and real-time data to build a continuous learning system. These learning systems solve a business problem in a contextually relevant way — better than before, and typically deliver rich information and insights that are either applied automatically or leveraged by end users to make superior decisions.

Intelligent applications are:

The Judges

Goldman Sachs
Scale Venture Partners
Cortical Ventures
NEA
Coatue
Positive Sum
Iconiq
Altimeter
Accel
General Catalyst
Redpoint Ventures
Floodgate
Playground Global
a16z
IVP
Mayfield Fund
Geodesic
AI2 Incubator
M12
GV
Canaan
Essence VC
Amazon
Goodwater Capital
Dimension
March Capital
Madrona Venture Group
AmexVentures
Meritech Capital
Acrew Capital
Greylock
Addition
Insight Partners
Menlo Ventures
.406 Ventures
Album
Anthos Capital
Bain Capital Ventures
B Capital
Cowboy Ventures
Emergence Capital
Factory
Felicis Ventures
Gradient
Notable Capital
Mango Capital
Radical Ventures
Revolution
Theory Ventures
Battery Ventures
Basis Set Ventures
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