Essential AI

Active#24 worldwide · Foundation models

Lab co-founded by Transformer co-author Ashish Vaswani, releasing open-weight models and training data for code, science and reasoning.

Artificial intelligence›Foundation models essential.ai

HQUnited States

Last roundSeries A · Dec 2023

Uback rankings

How the AI ranks →

Ranking	Tier	Rank	Edition	Next update
Foundation models · worldwide	Top 27	#24	Edition 0 · Oct 2026	4 Jan 2027

Rank historyOct 2026 · #24 Foundation modelsFirst edition: no movements yet.

Estimated valuation

AI · Foundation models ranking (worldwide)

≈ USD 290MUSD 190–440M · Hundreds of M$

Hundreds of k$

Millions $

Tens of M$

Hundreds of M$

Unicorn

Decacorn

Hectocorn

Anchor: Last known equity round: Series A · USD 56.5M · Dec 2023

An indicative editorial estimate produced by AI, imperfect by nature: neither a financial valuation nor investment advice. Only the market sets a company’s value. Method

Funding history

Date	Round	Amount	Type	Investors
Dec 2023	Series A	USD 56.5M	Equity	March Capital, Google, Nvidia, AMD, Thrive

Rounds as cited by Uback’s rankings. Equity, debt and grants are shown separately; only equity rounds count towards the valuation anchor.

Independent analyses

By industry professionals & analysts

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What the AI reads

Read by the AI at the next edition.

Comparable companies in foundation models

Full foundation models ranking →

Zyphra#23United StatesUnicorn Inception Labs#25United StatesHundreds of M$Reka AI#22United StatesUnicorn Deep Cogito#26United StatesHundreds of M$

Investors in Essential AI: March Capital · Google · NVIDIA · AMD · Thrive Capital

Last updated: Oct 2026Report an error

Uback is a content publisher and an aggregator of non-binding expressions of interest. It provides no investment advice, receives no mandate and takes part in no transaction. Rankings, ranges and brackets are editorial estimates produced by AI, purely indicative.