16 NYC Artificial Intelligence Startups on the Cutting Edge
In the Terminator series, Skynet is a neural network-based conscious group mind and artificial general intelligence system. In the series, the system gains self-awareness after spreading to millions of computers and starts a nuclear genocide. Obviously, that hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean the technology that powered Skynet isn't at least partially real. In fact, a lot of companies are doing really interesting, non-genocidal things with machine learning right here in New York City.
Top AI Companies in NYC
- Actutate
- Ocrolus
- Talkwalker
- Hyperscience
- Sisense
- Remesh
- AlphaSense
- x.ai
- Clarifai
- Nayya
Here are 16 NYC tech companies pushing the limits of artificial intelligence.

SPEEDA Edge offers a business intelligence platform for companies looking to innovate. The company has created a hub where customers can learn about market growth, industry trends, and emerging businesses. By offering daily content on over 60 industries, the company is helping numerous organizations anticipate upcoming challenges and plan accordingly.
Not everyone understands how to take advantage of their benefits, so Nayya is supporting individuals with in-depth insights. Analyzing consumer data points and claims data, Nayya determines the right benefits for workforces and provides easy-to-understand explanations. In addition, Nayya also advises workers on how and when to leverage their benefits, so more individuals can reap the rewards that come with insurance coverage.
Actuate operates AI-powered software that integrates with existing security cameras and infrastructure to provide a robust solution to protecting schools, businesses, construction sites and more from emerging threats. Capable of sending instant alerts, learning from analytics and reducing false positives by up to 95%, Actuate’s software works to detect weapons and intruders, all while reducing bias to respect the privacy of those within a space.
Ocrolus is an intuitive, automated solution for analyzing financial documents like pay stubs, tax documents and mortgage forms, virtually eliminating error from the manual review process. In addition to AI, Ocrolus intertwines its product with human quality control specialists to create a robust, end-to-end automation solution.


Kensho Technologies builds and deploys solutions in an effort to make data accessible, insightful, relevant and transformative. Leveraging S&P Global’s data, the company researches, develops and implements AI and machine learning capabilities that drive fact-based decision-making.

HyperScience automates everything in an office from low-skill tasks to complex internal workflows, allowing customers to focus on the more important aspects of their business. The company builds AI products that act as seamless replacements for a customer’s current processes, eliminating any lost time due to technological learning curves.

The Sisense platform prepares, analyzes and visualizes big or disparate datasets and then provides insights that can be embedded anywhere — whether that’s on the web, in dedicated apps or even in IoT devices like Amazon Echo.

AlphaSense caters to corporate and financial clients with an AI and natural language processing-powered search platform that enables users to find insights and information that traditional search engines would typically miss.

Socure provides a real-time predictive analytics platform that helps major companies verify customers quickly. Major e-commerce and financial institutions trust Socure with processing customer data and ensuring that their customer’s personal information is kept private.
Though Remesh is powered by artificial intelligence, it works to engage an audience in real time and garner valuable insights on a variety of topics. Companies looking to understand a market, improve a product or craft new customer experiences rely on Remesh for the insights they need, at the speed of tech.

While artificial intelligence has been around for years, Talkwalker’s CEO Todd Grossmann says this year is the year people won’t be able to escape it. Fortunately, the AI company has been perfecting the technology since it was founded in 2009. Grossmann explained what’s in store for the year.
"Artificial intelligence is really a trend to watch this year, and we’ll feel its impact everywhere in our daily professional lives. I truly believe that this technology will reshape the whole marketing and communications sector by getting rid of routine tasks and improving data accuracy, thus allowing professionals to focus on more creative tasks.
By implementing this adaptive technology into our listening and analytics tools, we are able to deliver powerful metrics and smart insights to companies that want to further understand what social media tells them about their brands. Our state-of-the-art social media analytics platform uses AI-powered technology to monitor and analyze online conversations in real-time across social networks, news websites, blogs and forums in over 185 languages."

Founded: 2018
Focus: Oncology + AI
What they do: Paige has developed an AI-native digital pathology ecosystem in an effort to accelerate and transform the discovery and treatment of cancer. The company’s AI suite is designed to provide pathologists, clinicians and researchers with insights drawn from decades of data diagnosed by cancer experts worldwide. Paige’s platform offers secure, scalable digital slide storage, enabling pathologists to further leverage computational pathology products as they become available for clinical use.

X.ai is an artificially powered personal assistant that focuses on meeting scheduling. It might sound like an odd niche, but if you think about of the amount of time you waste arranging meetings you realize how much it adds up. The company says that there are around 10 billion formal meetings conducted every year, which means a ton of productivity lost in managing one simple task. X.ai raised a $23 million round in April of last year.

Qloo uses machine learning to give users customized cultural recommendations. It’ll suggest things and places you might be interested in based on your other interests. So far, Qloo has mapped out over 125 billion cultural correlations and can give you suggestions on everything from restaurants to vacation destinations. The company recently raised a $4.5 million Series A, with the help of actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

New York City is actually home to a slew of AI-powered bots, but Init.ai goes one step further by allowing any company to create an AI-powered conversation bot. The platform lets just about any company build, train and deploy surprisingly intelligent conversation apps. Their service will even integrate with other platforms, like SMS and Facebook, so companies can have a voice everywhere their customers want to chat.
Clarifai is using neural networks to teach computers how to see. Their technology allows computers to differentiate between incredibly complex things — say, the difference between a cup of coffee and a cup of tea. Obviously, that sort of capability has tons of potential applications, and Clarifai is selling it using an SaaS model so that any entrepreneur can utilize the power of AI. The company raised a $30 million Series B in October of 2016.