AI Startup Intelligence

Foundation Model Companies

Discover foundation model and LLM companies building general models, domain models, multimodal systems, and model platforms.

Companies tracked: 149Key segments: general LLMs, domain models, multimodal modelsUpdated: November 7, 2026

Foundation Models Market Snapshot

149

tracked companies

visible location clusters

funding signals surfaced

The category is increasingly defined by distribution, inference economics, data access, and vertical specialization rather than model scale alone.

Representative Companies

A crawler-visible sample of companies from the AI Market Watch database.

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Company	Location	Funding	Focus
Upstage Founded 2020	Yongin-si, South Korea	Approximately $270M	A leading AI technology company specializing in 'Purpose-Built' Large Language Models (Solar) and high-precision Document AI solutions for enterprise digital transformation.
Seekr Technologies, Inc. Founded 2021	Vienna, Virginia, USA	Over $100 million	An end-to-end AI platform for building, managing, and deploying trustworthy and principle-aligned Large Language Models (LLMs).
Nous Research Founded 2023	New York, New York, United States	$158M	Applied AI research group developing and open-sourcing advanced Large Language Models (LLMs), datasets, and architectural improvements, exploring decentralized training.
Zhipu AI Founded 2019	Beijing, China	RMB8.3642B pre-IPO consideration + HK$52.094015B IPO and subsequent equity placements + US$3.01564B convertible-bond gross proceeds, through September 2026. Pre-IPO consideration includes in-kind investment.	A leading AGI infrastructure provider (rebranded internationally as Z.ai) developing the GLM foundation model series, autonomous agents, and the 'Zhipu Qingyan' consumer super-app.
Axiom Math Founded 2025	Palo Alto, USA	$264M (Seed $64M Oct 2025 + Series A $200M Mar 2026)	Axiom Math is building a self-improving AI mathematician that can solve complex math problems, generate proofs, propose new conjectures, and check its own work. Founded by 24-year-old Stanford dropout Carina Hong with ex-Meta AI researchers.
Z.ai Founded 2019	Beijing, China	At least HK$47.09365B plus US$3.01564B from July–September 2026 financings alone; excludes pre-IPO funding and IPO proceeds.	Z.ai (formerly Zhipu AI) is a Chinese AI company behind the GLM series of large language models, one of China's "AI tigers" and the first Chinese foundation model company to go public via IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Stability AI Founded 2019	London, UK	$231M total ($80M in June 2024, plus WPP strategic investment in March 2025)	An open-source generative AI company that develops foundation models for image, language, audio, and video generation.
Sovereign Australia AI Founded 2025	Melbourne, Australia	Not disclosed	Sovereign Australia AI provides a locally developed, ethical alternative to foreign AI models, focusing on transparency and Australian values.
AAI Technologies Founded 2023	Ramat Gan, Israel	$221M (Series A $200M in 2025, $1B valuation)	AAI Technologies (Double AI) develops Artificial Expert Intelligence (AEI) for human-like reasoning, founded by Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua
Aleph Alpha Founded 2019	Heidelberg, Germany	$533M	German sovereign-AI company building specialized English-German large language models, including the open-weight Kolibri MoE model, for governments and regulated industries.
Jua Founded 2022	Zurich, Switzerland	$29.5M ($2.5M Pre-Seed 2022 + $16M Seed 2024 + $11M Series A 2025)	Jua develops foundational AI models for physics to predict weather and climate patterns with exceptional accuracy. Uses the first AI "Large Physics Model" with 10,000x less compute than legacy systems.
ELYZA Founded 2018	Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan	$60M	University of Tokyo Matsuo Lab spinout and KDDI subsidiary developing Japanese-specialized large language models and enterprise generative-AI solutions.
Qingxing Heterogeneous Founded 2021	Beijing, China (R&D center in Shanghai)	$14M	Tsinghua-spinout building quantum-inspired AI models (QGP technology) that use simulated quantum computation during training but run efficient inference on standard classical GPUs.
Alibaba Group Founded 1999	Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China	$36.3B	Chinese multinational technology conglomerate specializing in e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, operating the Qwen family of large language models and Alibaba Cloud.
Peec AI Founded 2025	Berlin, Germany	$40M	AI-powered search analytics platform that helps brands track, analyze, and optimize their visibility in generative AI search results
TypeSafe AI Founded 2024	San Francisco, United States	$40M	TypeSafe AI is a San Francisco frontier AI lab building machine-native, composable AI models that return typed, calibrated decisions instead of text.
Google (Gemini) Founded 1998	Mountain View, California, US	$1.7B	Google's Gemini is a family of natively multimodal frontier large language models developed by Google DeepMind, integrated across Google Search, Workspace, Cloud, Android, and the Gemini app.
HiDream.ai Founded 2023	Beijing, China	$288M	HiDream.ai (智象未来) is a Chinese AI startup building visual multimodal foundation models for image, video, text, and 3D generation, with proprietary native full-modal architecture (UiT).
Stable AI Founded 2024	Xiong'an New Area / Beijing, China	Series A	Chinese startup (稳准智能/Wenzhun Intelligence) building LimiX, a general-purpose large data model (LDM) for structured/tabular data, co-developed with Tsinghua University's Prof. Cui Peng team.
Arcee Founded 2023	San Francisco, USA	$174M+	U.S. open-intelligence lab building frontier open-weight foundation models (Trinity family) that developers, enterprises, and public institutions can inspect, adapt, deploy, and own.