Where the Hell Are These AI Startups Coming From?
Over 11,000 AI Tools Tracked. 1 in 3 Already Dead.
We're tracking 11,266 AI tools. These aren’t ideas or pitch decks. They’re tools that were built and put out into the world. Of those, 7,139 are still live — which means about a third have already ghosted the internet. That level of churn tells a story, and we’re going to start telling it.
Right now, we’ve got verified HQ data for over 2,000 of these tools, pulled from Crunchbase. That’s what this current snapshot reflects.
We’re now working on a new layer of data using AI to extract location info directly from Terms of Service agreements. Not sexy, but incredibly valuable.
Because knowing where something is built still tells you a lot about how it thinks.
Let’s break it down…
The AI Superpowers
The US still dominates. No surprises there. Over 1,100 AI tools in our verified dataset are American-made. But this is no longer a one-country race:
🇺🇸 United States: 1182
🇬🇧 UK: 125
🇮🇳 India: 83
🇨🇦 Canada: 74
🇩🇪 Germany: 68
🇫🇷 France: 43
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 34
What Does the City Data Show?
Here’s the top 10 cities where AI tools are being built, based on our current dataset:
🇺🇸 San Francisco, United States: 370 tools
🇺🇸 New York, United States: 129
🇬🇧 London, United Kingdom: 103
🇺🇸 Mountain View, United States: 51
🇫🇷 Paris, France: 38
🇸🇬 Singapore, Singapore: 35
🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany: 34
🇺🇸 Palo Alto, United States: 30
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, United States: 29
🇺🇸 San Jose, United States: 28
San Francisco still leads the pack, but it only accounts for about 18% of the total dataset. In other words, more than 4 out of 5 tools are being built somewhere else.
Cities like London, Toronto, Bangalore, Berlin, and Tel Aviv are turning into serious hubs. Some have better access to engineers. Some move faster. Some are just cheaper to build in.
Tracking where tools are being made isn’t about curiosity. It’s about spotting unfair advantages before the rest of the market catches on.
Who's Quietly Building?
Some small players are on the rise… 🚀
🇪🇪 Estonia: continues to be the Davos of digital
🇨🇭 Switzerland: neat, clean, quietly AI-forward
🇮🇱 Israel: still one of the best-kept secrets in AI security and infra
These hubs don’t have huge numbers in isolation, but they’re outsized given the population and ecosystem size. Especially Estonia.
How We're Getting Smarter?
Crunchbase is great, but we’re still hungry for more data.
So, WITAI is building a system that uses AI to read Terms of Service agreements and pull HQ location, automatically. Think: legal docs + NLP models + just enough caffeine.
Because location gives you:
Regulatory posture
Access to capital and talent
Data privacy assumptions
The future of market intelligence is structured data pulled from the chaos of AI churn and copycat saturation. This is step one.
Dead Products Leave Clues
Out of the 11,266 tools we’re tracking, only 7,139 are still live. That’s nearly 4,000 that have already gone dark.
Let that sink in.
This space is noisy, fast, and brutally unforgiving. Founders vanish. Landing pages die. Categories collapse before they form.
We’ll dig into what died and why in a future post. For now, know this: the churn is real.
Why This Matters?
If you’re building, investing, acquiring, or just trying to stay relevant, you need to know where things are coming from.
Hiring? Know the hubs.
Scouting? Know where the talent’s shipping.
Expanding? Know where the next breakout is being coded.
This isn’t a geography lesson. It’s AI market intelligence, and geography is just one layer. We’re also looking at category-level churn.
Which spaces are oversaturated?
Where is search demand rising faster than supply?
Which categories are quietly collapsing, and which ones are still wide open?
By comparing branded keyword trend data with the number of live tools in each space, product churn… etc.
We can spot the gaps — and avoid the pileups.
Not all churn is bad. Sometimes it tells you exactly where not to build.
The Bottom Line___
If you know where things are being built and what’s quietly disappearing, you’re not just watching the AI race. You’re reading the map before most know there is one.
This is how you find the gaps. This is how you build with leverage.
Smart money’s paying attention. Are you?
⏭️ What’s Next?
We’re just getting started. Future issues will explore emerging AI trends, breakthrough tools, and the deeper shifts that give us signals about how artificial intelligence is impacting society, work, and everyday life.
Not sure what’s coming next? Neither are we — and that’s what makes it fun.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss what’s around the corner.