Madrona Announces the 2025 Intelligent Applications 40, Recognizing the World's Leading Private AI Companies

Audio By Carbonatix

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 28, 2025--

Madrona today announced the 2025 Intelligent Applications 40 (IA40), the annual list of the top 40 private technology companies pioneering the future of applied artificial intelligence. The 2025 cohort showcases the breakout startups redefining how software is built and used—from agentic infrastructure to vertical AI applications to new consumer interfaces.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250828149539/en/

The winners and rising stars of the 2025 Intelligent Application 40.

This year’s winners were selected through a rigorous nomination and evaluation process led by Madrona and PitchBook, incorporating both quantitative data and expert input from over 70 venture capitalists across 54 firms. More than 340 companies were nominated.

Reflecting the extraordinary pace of innovation in AI, 27 companies are first-time IA40 winners. Just one company—Databricks—has appeared on the list every year since the list’s inception in 2021, a sign of the rising bar for inclusion and the growing diversity of AI leaders.

“The 2025 IA40 celebrates the builders of intelligent systems—not just tools, but reasoning machines that improve with use, integrate deeply into workflows, and collaborate with users,” said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona. “We’re now entering an era where the most valuable software is learning, adaptive, and agentic by default.”

The 2025 IA40 winners are:

EARLY:
Distyl
Listen Labs
Exa
CodeRabbit
Gamma
Fireflies.ai
Pylon
Factory
Clarify
Aaru

MID:
Granola
Linear
Mercor
Cartesia
Basis
Prophet Security
HeyGen
Legora
Bolt.new
Dropzone AI

LATE:
Lovable
Cursor
Anduril
Abridge
ElevenLabs
Perplexity
Canva
Applied Intuition
Clay
OpenEvidence

ENABLER:
Anthropic
OpenAI
Databricks
ClickHouse
Vercel
Together AI
CrewAI
Fal
Browserbase
Statsig

EMERGING ENABLER:
Modal Labs
Haize Labs
Braintrust
LangChain
Arcee AI

Winning companies span four funding-stage categories— Early, Mid, Late, and Enablers —with an additional five Emerging Enablers featured as rising infrastructure startups with under $50 million raised.

Across the full 2025 list, companies have raised $119 billion in total. Notably, $86 billion—over 70%—was raised in just the last 12 months, underscoring the accelerating pace of AI investment.

Key themes emerging from the 2025 IA40 include:

• Next-gen user interfaces: Modalities like voice, video, and natural language are enabling more adaptive, human-like interfaces, with companies like HeyGen, Cartesia, and ElevenLabs leading the way.
• Agentic software: OpenAI, Perplexity, and Factory are among those advancing systems that reason, orchestrate, and execute autonomously across workflows.
• Software meets services: Startups like Distyl and Aaru are introducing outcome-based pricing and “service-as-software” models, reshaping the economics of SaaS.
• Developer transformation: Tools like Cursor, Bolt.new, and Lovable are redefining software development, turning coding into a natural language experience.
• Vertical momentum: Companies like Abridge (healthcare), Anduril (defense), and Legora (legal) demonstrate how AI-native products win with depth, data, and ecosystem leverage.
• Enabling infrastructure: From Together AI’s model hosting to Browserbase’s agent access layer to Databricks’ enterprise data platform, the infrastructure stack continues to mature—and scale.

The 2025 winners will be honored at the upcoming Intelligent Applications Summit, held September 30–October 1 in Seattle, hosted by Madrona in partnership with AWS, Microsoft, Google, McKinsey, NYSE, Goldman Sachs, and Delta.

For full details on the winners and evaluation methodology, visit: https://www.ia40.com/the-list

To request an invite to the Summit, visit: https://www.ia40.com/summit

About Madrona

Madrona ( www.madrona.com ) is a Seattle-based venture capital firm with nearly 30 years of experience investing in early-stage technology companies. Madrona partners with founders from day one, providing long-term support to build innovative, industry-leading businesses for the long run. The firm has more than $3 billion under management, and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon, Snowflake, UIPath, Rover, Redfin, and Smartsheet. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, Madrona also backs companies across the country, focusing on sectors such as AI, intelligent applications, and life sciences.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250828149539/en/

CONTACT: Caleb Bushner

[email protected]

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA WASHINGTON

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: APPS/APPLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SOFTWARE START-UP INTERNET DATA ANALYTICS DATA MANAGEMENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

SOURCE: Madrona

Copyright Business Wire 2025.

PUB: 08/28/2025 10:00 AM/DISC: 08/28/2025 09:59 AM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250828149539/en