Newcomer and Bessemer publish first AI 100 ranking, with Anthropic at No. 1

Newcomer and Bessemer Venture Partners published their inaugural AI 100 on November 12, 2026, placing Anthropic ahead of OpenAI and Databricks. Presented at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in San Francisco, the ranking combines business performance with investor judgment—and shows how heavily private AI valuations are concentrated in model companies.

How the ranking assigns weight

The AI 100 succeeds Bessemer’s Cloud 100, published annually from 2016 through 2025. It is not simply a revenue leaderboard.

• Market leadership: 35% of the score.
• Estimated valuation: 30%.
• Operating metrics: 20%.
• People and culture: 15%.

Newcomer describes the selection as partly quantitative and partly subjective. Revenue, valuation and market share were weighed alongside people and culture. It says Bessemer checked the figures using company data and PitchBook.

That approach accommodates businesses at very different stages. Bessemer says the list includes companies with effectively no revenue alongside businesses approaching $100 billion in annualized revenue run rate. A high position therefore does not necessarily mean a company has already built a large commercial business.

Large valuations, unevenly distributed

Bessemer puts the companies’ combined private value at $3.6 trillion, compared with $1.1 trillion for the 2025 Cloud 100. Newcomer gives a slightly different estimate of around $3.5 trillion. These are the partners’ estimates of private-company value, not proceeds from stock sales or a tally of revenue.

The average valuation is $36 billion, but the median—the middle value—is $9.3 billion, according to Bessemer. The gap reflects the weight of the largest companies. The top 10 account for 70% of total value, with Stripe, Waymo, Cognition, Anduril, Ramp, Fireworks and ElevenLabs following the three leaders.

9%Share of companies

Frontier labs and foundation-model builders make up 9% of the AI 100, Bessemer says.

55%Share of total value

Those companies account for 55% of the ranking’s combined private valuation.

Growth provides Bessemer’s argument for the prices. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, grew an average of 480% year over year across the list; the median increase was 275%. Bessemer says that median exceeds any annual growth rate recorded by its Cloud 100.

The average valuation is 57 times ARR, above the Cloud 100’s 2021 peak of 34 times. The median multiple is less extreme: 23 times, against 20 times for the 2025 Cloud 100.

Respondents see value moving beyond the labs

The accompanying survey offers a different view of where value may accumulate. Bessemer surveyed more than 300 AI-native companies during the application process. Of those respondents, 87% expected value to accrue to applications rather than model providers, while 79% believed leading models would converge in quality within two to three years.

These are respondents’ expectations, not demonstrated outcomes. Applications already represent roughly 40 companies on the list, with a combined valuation of $629 billion. Meanwhile, data and agent infrastructure is the most represented single category, with 16 companies. The ranking’s breadth therefore differs sharply from its concentration of value.