The article is vague about the companies in the paper, for some reason.
In the paper, OpenAI is at the top of the chart for cumulative citations. MEGVII, Hugging Face, Waymo, Momenta, Preferred Netowkrs, Anthropic, Owkin, and Databricks, and Aibee follow (in that order). Yes, that is citations, not publications, but they explain that they're trying to use that as a proxy for significance, albeit an imperfect one.
Companies like Google aren't included because they aren't unicorn startups.
As far as I can tell, the paper never actually mentions the companies who aren't publishing papers. Open AI, Anthropic, and hugging face are all specifically mentioned as companies that do publish papers. Just FYI for anyone else who reads "AI's top startups" and immediately assumes OpenAI and Anthropic.
Perhaps I'm imagining it but the entire industry was build on published research, this "AI wave" is at odds with that and seems to be driven by greed (although they'll claim some arms race or something to help themselves sleep at night).
There should be a new ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policy being pushed recognizing the important role this plays. Although ESG and all norms have been set aside in this grim new world it seems.
> Perhaps I'm imagining it but the entire industry was build on public research
There is some excellent publicly-funded research in there, but pivotal papers like Attention Is All You Need and the numerous pivotal OpenAI publications were privately funded.
OpenAI is at the top of the chart in the study.
I think you're bringing some assumptions into this conversation that aren't supported by the evidence.
When they do this, are they buying a single copy of say Book A and destroying a single Book A copy? Or are they buying every copy they can find of Book A and destroying all of them?
Elon recently (2d) tweeted about making sure they preserve rare books and "scan them the hard way". That tweet launched a cultural wave of opposition regarding the debinding of rare books.
The discussion has been around, but it's flared significantly recently. Not sure if that's what the person you're responding to is specifically inflamed about.
Regardless, old/rare books are certainly being acquired and destroyed.
No, he didn't tweeted about "making sure" of anything.
Elon tweeted "I’ve asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way vs just cutting off the spine and scanning"
which is no sense a credible source for what he actually asked SpaceXAI team to do, or if they are doing it, or what they were doing before yesterday. Elon has an extremely long and thorough track record of lying.
I’m not sure why this is so surprising? AI company does not automatically mean research company. The vast majority of new startups popping up over the last few years have commercial motivations, and use models built by someone else. Why are you expecting them to publish scientific papers?
50% of startups contributing to public research is actually a crazy good outcome. That’s far more than I had expected.
I don't expect non-foundational or non-frontier startups to do, or publish much heavy hitting research. "AI" has become such a ubiquitous description, it is probably easier to find non-AI startups.
What the blogificafion of AI research has done is allowed all kinds of claims and terminology related to AI to be introduced and taken up in a manner replicating social media dynamics. And that is simply not healthy. We’re fast reaching a place where any claim can be backed up with a set of numbers from a number of experiments run in some gamified environment or the other, with little concern for if it all adds up to anything.
It’s a vicious loop, because this same junk then goes in to train the next models which help spit out the next set of models AND blogs/papers.
The net effect is not dissimilar to setting termites loose in a library.
No traditional research is mostly done by post-docs and have a phd level of education rather than a tech bro that passed leetcode. That seems like a good bar to have; not too mention the whole peer review thing, hard to really understand anything if you purposely withhold it and tell people to kick rocks.
Once something goes commercial, academics have to consider what progress would be research-worthy, rather than a half-baked prototype for a product or feature.
Companies can’t be expected to publish their confidential and proprietary information about their feature development, and academics should consider projects that would have higher impact.
If you’re taking up a seat in a PhD program tinkering with would-be feature ideas for an existing major tech company, you should really just get hired by that tech company, where the resources are abundant and the degree is not required.
There is no reason to publish anything in the AI era until you have reaped as much benefit from it as you are satisfied with. "Building in public" and "Researching in public" now means someone can swoop in with an AI and copy you instantly and become your competition overnight. Keep secrets.
All startups barely publish their research, because doing that would be incredibly stupid for the most part, because they want to sell the stuff they invent not give it away for free.
> “If we were racing forward on cancer-curing AI, I would be like, ’Fantastic, full steam ahead,’” she says. “But that’s not what we’re racing toward, right?”
We're not racing towards anything. We've been going in circles for years.
The article is vague about the companies in the paper, for some reason.
In the paper, OpenAI is at the top of the chart for cumulative citations. MEGVII, Hugging Face, Waymo, Momenta, Preferred Netowkrs, Anthropic, Owkin, and Databricks, and Aibee follow (in that order). Yes, that is citations, not publications, but they explain that they're trying to use that as a proxy for significance, albeit an imperfect one.
Companies like Google aren't included because they aren't unicorn startups.
databricks is a top ai startup?. i thought they did spark hosting or something.
what makes them a top ai startup
$160 billion valuation and market capture among some top (non-AI, traditional enterprise) companies, I think.
As far as I can tell, the paper never actually mentions the companies who aren't publishing papers. Open AI, Anthropic, and hugging face are all specifically mentioned as companies that do publish papers. Just FYI for anyone else who reads "AI's top startups" and immediately assumes OpenAI and Anthropic.
Yet none of them would have been here if Google hadn't published "Attention is all you need", the irony.
The authors of that paper are all at AI companies not named Google.
They wouldn't be if Google hadn't published "Attention is all you need".
Perhaps I'm imagining it but the entire industry was build on published research, this "AI wave" is at odds with that and seems to be driven by greed (although they'll claim some arms race or something to help themselves sleep at night).
There should be a new ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policy being pushed recognizing the important role this plays. Although ESG and all norms have been set aside in this grim new world it seems.
> Perhaps I'm imagining it but the entire industry was build on public research
There is some excellent publicly-funded research in there, but pivotal papers like Attention Is All You Need and the numerous pivotal OpenAI publications were privately funded.
OpenAI is at the top of the chart in the study.
I think you're bringing some assumptions into this conversation that aren't supported by the evidence.
Sorry I mean published i.e. available to the public.
I was also referring to published papers available to the public.
Like I said, I think you're bringing some assumptions to this conversation that aren't based on the how the industry came about.
Forget publishing, companies like misanthropic are buying rare books and destroying it.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
When they do this, are they buying a single copy of say Book A and destroying a single Book A copy? Or are they buying every copy they can find of Book A and destroying all of them?
Elon recently (2d) tweeted about making sure they preserve rare books and "scan them the hard way". That tweet launched a cultural wave of opposition regarding the debinding of rare books.
The discussion has been around, but it's flared significantly recently. Not sure if that's what the person you're responding to is specifically inflamed about.
Regardless, old/rare books are certainly being acquired and destroyed.
No, he didn't tweeted about "making sure" of anything.
Elon tweeted "I’ve asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way vs just cutting off the spine and scanning"
which is no sense a credible source for what he actually asked SpaceXAI team to do, or if they are doing it, or what they were doing before yesterday. Elon has an extremely long and thorough track record of lying.
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2081844165881594362
What do you mean?
they're refering to this: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-de...
To scan them, they usually have to resort breaking them into individual pages.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
The scanning process destroys the book.
Note it doesn't have to, it's just faster to.
Internet Archive scans their books one page at a time keeping the book intact and stored in a warehouse.
I’m not sure why this is so surprising? AI company does not automatically mean research company. The vast majority of new startups popping up over the last few years have commercial motivations, and use models built by someone else. Why are you expecting them to publish scientific papers?
50% of startups contributing to public research is actually a crazy good outcome. That’s far more than I had expected.
I don't expect non-foundational or non-frontier startups to do, or publish much heavy hitting research. "AI" has become such a ubiquitous description, it is probably easier to find non-AI startups.
What the blogificafion of AI research has done is allowed all kinds of claims and terminology related to AI to be introduced and taken up in a manner replicating social media dynamics. And that is simply not healthy. We’re fast reaching a place where any claim can be backed up with a set of numbers from a number of experiments run in some gamified environment or the other, with little concern for if it all adds up to anything. It’s a vicious loop, because this same junk then goes in to train the next models which help spit out the next set of models AND blogs/papers. The net effect is not dissimilar to setting termites loose in a library.
How is that different from traditional research publication? It's faster?
No traditional research is mostly done by post-docs and have a phd level of education rather than a tech bro that passed leetcode. That seems like a good bar to have; not too mention the whole peer review thing, hard to really understand anything if you purposely withhold it and tell people to kick rocks.
Once something goes commercial, academics have to consider what progress would be research-worthy, rather than a half-baked prototype for a product or feature.
Companies can’t be expected to publish their confidential and proprietary information about their feature development, and academics should consider projects that would have higher impact.
If you’re taking up a seat in a PhD program tinkering with would-be feature ideas for an existing major tech company, you should really just get hired by that tech company, where the resources are abundant and the degree is not required.
There is no reason to publish anything in the AI era until you have reaped as much benefit from it as you are satisfied with. "Building in public" and "Researching in public" now means someone can swoop in with an AI and copy you instantly and become your competition overnight. Keep secrets.
Do startups in other fields constantly publish their research?
The age of the dark forest is upon us
Startups exist to profit, not necessarily publish.
Trade secrets are back, baby!
More to the point, without determining how much work is “worthy” of a paper it is unclear how much this matters.
Most AI companies are either a product and marketing layer over a model or not meaningfully moving any dimension to be worthy of a paper.
Also, formal papers and blogs and “cards” are all being intertwined.
All startups barely publish their research, because doing that would be incredibly stupid for the most part, because they want to sell the stuff they invent not give it away for free.
The stuff they invent isn't what's in the papers. The progress in AI is in the engineering hurdles.
> “If we were racing forward on cancer-curing AI, I would be like, ’Fantastic, full steam ahead,’” she says. “But that’s not what we’re racing toward, right?”
We're not racing towards anything. We've been going in circles for years.
Feels more like 3 steps forward and 2 steps back.
> We're not racing towards anything. We've been going in circles for years.
We reached the NASCAR-racing equivalent of scientific research.
That’s because most of its slop, and not reproducible
Live by the non-determinism, die by the non-determinism.
Funny, as ONE PERSON with Claude, I've been on a tear when it comes to publishing my own research:
https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=author&query=Magarshak%...
So I know that smart people in those companies can definitely publish. In fact, a whole team should probably be publishing like no tomorrow!
Have you built the things described in those papers?
Yes, actually.
To be fair — from about half of the papers.
gate keepers of antiquated practice decry people realizing they they dont need to get past the gate
No man is an island.