Aleph Alpha, Mistral AI, AI21 are some of the challengers to US generative AI influence

Companies around the world, including the United States, China, and France, have been working to bring together their AI capabilities for years.

Generative AI’s potential to improve productivity, inspire creativity, and completely rethink workflows is now unfolding in countless industries. Regardless of the business case, companies using or creating their own generative AI tools are coming to the forefront of the conversation.

To mark the inaugural Brainstorm AI conference at London’s Rosewood Hotel, we shed light on some of these complex and pressing themes. luck has taken a deep dive into the current state of generative AI around the world, using unique insights based on data from Amsterdam-based intelligence firm Dealroom.

Our analysis covers the world’s top 100 generative AI companies by funding. It’s not really surprising that companies based in the United States (especially those based in the San Francisco Bay Area) dominate the rest of the world by light years. Sam Altman’s OpenAI is by far the most funded AI company, closely followed by his California neighbors Anthropic AI and Inflection AI. In Europe, innovations such as Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha are gaining traction.

Still, companies in France, Britain and Germany received some of the money, not because they lacked it, but because they lack the massive scale of their American peers. Israel, which we included in our analysis, also has an active generative AI scene.

In numbers, this means that Dealroom’s data on 100 companies excludes companies with less than $70 million in total funding. The majority of European startups fall here. In this case, Dealroom’s data primarily considers funding amounts, so some notable companies in the generative AI space, such as Google, are not included in the analysis below.

But Europe needs to congratulate itself on the progress it has made. For example, 3 out of 15 companies on our list have female founders. The seven companies were originally founded in Europe, but have since moved to the United States and have raised about $1.7 billion in funding.

Given the variety of use cases for the technology, it can be difficult to define what qualifies as a generative AI company. By definition, generative AI uses algorithms to create new, realistic content, such as text, images, and audio, based on training data. Dealroom’s data is current as of April 2024 and looks at companies that use or create large language models trained on large datasets to create new content.

The graph below provides a glimpse of how Europe compares to some of the world’s AI power players. It also shows where in Europe generative AI is making the biggest advances and who is driving it.

Total funding by region for the world’s top 100 generative AI startups

It is clear that the US received large amounts of funds. U.S. companies have raised more than 10 times as much, raising $36.8 billion compared to European and Israeli companies, which have raised just $3.2 billion to date. OpenAI is the clear leader with $12.3 billion in funding, according to data compiled by Dealroom.

Key markets in Europe are home to the largest generation of funded AI players

In our analysis, Israel leads Europe as a hub for generative AI companies based on how much funding it secures. In continental Europe, Germany and France emerge at the top.

According to Dealroom data, the majority of funding for European companies comes from European investors. About 43% of financing for companies in Europe and Israel comes from their home countries, about 13% from another country within Europe, and 39% from the United States.

The most funded companies in Europe and Israel

Here are the companies that are raising the most money in Europe and Israel. His Aleph Alpha, Germany’s answer to OpenAI, founded by Jonas Andrulis, leads this category. In November 2023, Bosch, SAP, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise supported a $500 million Series B funding round, one of the largest AI funding rounds in European history.

France’s Mistral AI, led by Arthur Mensch, took second place. Microsoft announced in February that it would invest $16.3 million in the French company.

See below for a complete list of generative AI companies headquartered in Europe and Israel in funding order, according to Dealroom data.

Aleph Alpha

Release year: 2019
Headquarters city/country: heidelberg, germany
Total funds (USD): $641.14 million

Mistral AI

Release year: 2023
Headquarters city/country: Paris, France
Total funds: $553 million

AI21

Release year: 2017
Headquarters city/country: Tel Aviv – Yafo, Israel
Total funds: $326.5 million

light trix

Release year: 2013
Headquarters city/country: Jerusalem, Israel
Total funds: $305 million

Sera

Release year: 2016
Headquarters city/country: London, England
Total funds: $302.5 million

Synthesia

Release year: 2017
Headquarters city/country: london, united kingdom
Total funds: $155.58 million

Stability AI

Release year: 2019
Headquarters city/country: london, united kingdom
Total funds: $151 million

Poolside AI

Release year: 2023
Headquarters city/country: Paris, France
Total funds: $126.01 million

pecans

Release year: 2016
Headquarters city/country: Tel Aviv – Yafo, Israel
Total funds: $112 million

deep L

Release year: 2009
Headquarters city/country: cologne, germany
Total funds: $110 million

MDClone

Release year: 2015
Headquarters city/country: beersheba, israel
Total funds: $104.01 million

corti

Release year: 2016
Headquarters city/country: copenhagen denmark
Total funds: $90.9 million

Stracio

Release year: 2014
Headquarters city/country: Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
Total funds: $85.8 million

Sana Institute

Release year: 2016
Headquarters city/country: stockholm sweden
Total funds: $82.57 million

ready player me

Release year: 2014
Headquarters city/country: Tallinn, Estonia
Total funds: $72.55 million

This feature was reported with the help of Fortune Europe Editor-in-Chief Alex Wood Morton, List Director Grete Schepers, Research Analyst Elena Medina and Production Editor Athlesha Mehta.