Among the 3 overarching categories — horizontal applications, vertical applications, and infrastructure — the vertical layer leads the way in 2025 YTD funding.
Vertical AI 100 winners have raised over $1B this year so far, led by 3 mega-rounds:
In defense, Saronic raised a $600M Series C to build a factory for autonomous ships.
In life sciences, Lila Sciences grabbed $200M in seed funding to support autonomous research labs.
In healthcare, Hippocratic AI raised a $141M Series B for its marketplace of AI agents that help mitigate clinical staff shortages.
Vertical AI is poised to surge this year as startups tackle industry-specific problems, especially in highly regulated and data-sensitive sectors.
For instance, one Hippocratic AI customer we interviewed appreciates the explainability of its AI models, as well as the startup’s integrations with existing healthcare systems.
Healthcare isn’t the only industry where AI is gaining rapid traction.
The vertical players in this year’s AI 100 span 10 industries that represent a convergence of high-value problems, rich data availability, and regulatory momentum.
Below are the leading industries by the average CB Insights Mosaic score (which measures health & growth potential) of AI 100 winners:
Auto & mobility: 856.The autonomous vehicle space is rebounding. Driving the resurgence: generative AI is helping remove hurdles to widespread adoption, while the potential for regulatory pullback is attracting more investors.
Aerospace & defense: 838. The battlefield is becoming increasingly autonomous, driven by AI advances across aerial, ground, ocean surface, and underwater domains. See nearly 250 companies innovating here in our AI in defense tech market map.
Manufacturing: 804. In the factory of the future, robots will coordinate in unison to get products out the door, while intelligent AI systems oversee the entire manufacturing value chain, from the output of the mines to stock at the retailers. Explore this vision in our Future of the Factory report.
Fake it till you break it: Israeli startup Promai is suing its former CEO, Erez Ben Eshay, for allegedly faking contracts with Boeing and Medtronic — even using ChatGPT to forge documents. The company says Ben Eshay posed as an Air Force officer, lied about his personal life, and duped Promai into spending nearly $5M building products no one ordered. Promai claims the deception crippled its real product development and forced the company to the brink. Ben Eshay denies all wrongdoing, calling it a "commercial dispute" he wasn’t involved in.
Delivery wars: DoorDash is asking a California court to toss out Uber’s lawsuit, which accuses it of bullying restaurants into exclusive deals. DoorDash called the suit a "cynical scare tactic" and said it plans to "vigorously" defend itself. Uber fired back, arguing it’s fighting coercion, not competition. A court hearing is set for July 11 — and meanwhile, DoorDash confirmed it made a $3.6B offer to acquire UK-based Deliveroo.
Code clash: Anthropic issued a takedown notice against a developer who de-obfuscated and posted the source code for its AI coding tool, Claude Code. Unlike OpenAI’s competing Codex CLI — released under a permissive Apache 2.0 license — Claude Code is tied to Anthropic’s commercial license and has its code locked down. Developers criticized Anthropic’s move, especially as OpenAI has embraced open-source collaboration by merging community suggestions into Codex CLI. While Claude Code is still in beta, the incident highlights growing tension over openness in AI tools — and marks a rare goodwill win for OpenAI.
​​HR battle royale: Deel has filed a countersuit against rival Rippling, accusing it of smearing Deel’s reputation and mishandling client funds. Rippling had sued Deel last month for alleged corporate espionage — claims Deel denies. Rippling CEO Parker Conrad hit back on X, writing: “Nowhere does Deel dispute our central allegation — that [Deel’s CEO] personally recruited a spy to steal Rippling’s trade secrets.” Both cases are now moving forward in court.
P.S. Last week, the analysts behind the AI 100 broke down how they put together this year’s list and the trends you should be watching. Get the recording here.
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