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Built for signal
Not a popularity contest. Not a generic award. The AI List is a curated selection of founders building AI-native companies with strong product, clear execution, and long-term potential. We recognize the ones with real traction and the vision to define what comes next.
Sound like you — or someone you know?
The 2025 Honorees
In the months since being named to The AI List, this group has shipped into production, closed enterprise deals, advanced research, and earned a place in conversations that matter — with customers, peers, and policymakers alike. Here are some of last year’s success stories:
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Founder sold his AI analytics startup to Sitecore for $225 million
Chris Andrew
Co-founder/CEO, Scrunch AI -
Named Forbes 30 Under 30, SF Business Times 40 Under 40 and selected for OpenAI's ChatGPT Futures program
Amrita Bhasin
Co-founder/CEO, Sotira -
AI security startup tripled revenue and deployed at Tesla, stopping all reported theft and intrusion
Uday Kiran Chaka,
Founder, Sentry AI -
Took her supply chain AI platform through Y Combinator and onto a Times Square billboard
Eshani Mehta
Founder, Lumari -
Has enterprise deployments running across organizations including PepsiCo, DocuSign, and the U.S. Department of Defense
João Moura
CEO, CrewAI -
Built and deployed the first real-time AI witness examination tool, now used in depositions at Fortune 500 legal departments
Neda Mansoorian
Founder/CEO, FullProof.ai -
Named GeekWire CEO of the Year while scaling his AI real estate platform to 7,000+ agents
Luis Poggi
Co-founder/CEO, HouseWhisper AI -
Released what the team calls the most accurate physics-based AI model ever built for magnetic materials
Jonathan Bean
CEO, Material Nexus -
Inception's Mercury 2 ranked first on Artificial Analysis's model recommender for speed and intelligence
Aditya Grover
Co-founder, Inception -
AI agents for credit unions cut loan processing costs by 80% and compressed a 3-minute workflow to 51 seconds
Ankur Patel
Founder/CEO, Multimodal -
Video publish rate grew 35x as the team pushed past its own quality benchmarks
Caroline Clark
CEO, Arcade Software -
Built an AI site reliability agent now trusted to decide which pull requests ship to production
Gou Rao
Co-founder/CEO, NeuBird AI
The 2025 Judges
We’re grateful to our esteemed panel of judges — respected leaders and builders whose work serves as a compass for the future of AI. Their time, insight, and commitment will help shape this list and spotlight the emerging voices driving the field forward.
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Dr. Fei-Fei Li
Professor, Stanford AI
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Dustin Moskovitz
Co-founder, Asana, Facebook
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Emily Chang
Host/Producer, Bloomberg
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Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO, Snowflake
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Rahul Vohra
Founder/CEO, Superhuman
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Armon Dadgar
Co-founder/CTO, HashiCorp (IBM)
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Ion Stoica
Co-founder, Anyscale/Databricks
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May Habib
Co-founder/CEO, Writer
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Darren Mowry
VP, Google Cloud Global Startups
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Navin Chaddha
Managing Partner, Mayfield
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Derek Andersen
Co-founder/CEO, Startup Grind
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Howard G. Wright
VP, Startup Ecosystem, NVIDIA
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Nicholas Thompson
CEO, The Atlantic
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Stefano Ermon
CEO, Inception Labs; Stanford
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Asha Sharma
Corporate VP/Head of Product, Microsoft AI
Pushing the World Forward
The AI List will spotlight change makers and rising stars: founders, builders, researchers, industry leaders, media voices, policymakers, startups and more. Let’s recognize the people behind the work that has potential for outsized future impact, technical depth, and reflects a values-driven approach to building in AI.
The Honorees
The Honorees
Everything you want to know about
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Anyone making an impact in AI can be nominated. We’re seeking rising stars across builders, researchers, founders (with less than $50M in funding), policy leaders, media voices and industry leaders whose work points toward bold innovation and meaningful progress. Nominees should embody values of responsibility, diversity, and inclusivity, and show early signs of expertise, creativity, and future influence in their field.
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To nominate, simply complete the nomination form before September 10, 2025. It should take no more than 10 minutes of your time.
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Absolutely!
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Nominations are carefully evaluated by a panel of judges.
Each entry is reviewed based on four key criteria:
The significance of the nominee’s contributions to the current and future landscape AI.
Leadership in Innovation: Advancing bold, responsible, and groundbreaking work.
Ethics: Demonstrating commitment to responsible and ethical AI practices.
Potential: Showing early signs of meaningful impact, promise, or influence in the field.
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Honorees will be recognized as emerging change makers for their leadership in AI innovation across the Mayfield, Divot, and Startup Grind communities. They will receive a range of exclusive benefits announced when the list is revealed on October 1. Highlights include:
Public recognition as a rising leader shaping the future of AI.
Opportunities for increased media visibility to amplify your impact.
Exclusive access to private networking events with industry pioneers and investors.
Membership to a curated AI community focused on collaboration and innovation.
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For more information about the nomination process or event details, feel free to contact us. Our team is here to help! ai-list@startupgrind.com
