Research Lab

Compare the 15 companies in Research Lab — independently verified, re-verified on a rolling schedule, graded on capability, pricing and compliance.

What is in Research Lab

HokAI tracks 15 active tools in Research Lab.

Research Lab — Companies

  • AI21 Labs — AI21 Labs, founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv by Yoav Shoham and Amnon Shashua, builds Jamba and Wordtune and raised $636M at $1.4B valuation (May 2025).
  • Aleph Alpha — Aleph Alpha develops multimodal language models processing text and images with emphasis on interpretability and European values. Founded in Germany, the company focuses on explainable AI for enterprises.
  • Anthropic — Anthropic, founded 2021 by 7 ex-OpenAI researchers, builds Claude and was valued near $965B after its May 2026 Series H round.
  • Cohere — Cohere, founded in 2019 in Toronto by ex-Google researchers, builds Command, Embed, and Rerank models and raised $1.54B at $7B valuation (Sep 2025).
  • DeepSeek — DeepSeek is a Chinese AI research company developing frontier language and reasoning models, including DeepSeek V4-Pro. Founded by High-Flyer hedge fund CEO Liang Wenfeng in 2023, the company is known for achieving GPT-level performance at dramatically lower compute and API cost.
  • Google DeepMind — Google DeepMind, Alphabet's AI research division formed in 2023, builds Gemini, AlphaFold, and Gemma with 8,000+ researchers across six continents.
  • Hanno Labs — Hanno Labs is a small AI research lab building causal intelligence and knowledge system tools, including the open-source Bosun judge model for agent memory graphs.
  • MiniMax — MiniMax is a Shanghai AI lab founded in 2021, now public on HKEX (0100.HK) since January 2026. It builds the open-weight MiniMax M2.7 model and Hailuo video AI.
  • Mistral AI — Mistral AI, founded in April 2023 in Paris by three ex-Meta researchers, builds Mistral, Mixtral, and Le Chat and raised $1.47B including $830M debt (Mar 2026).
  • Moonshot AI — Beijing AI lab founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, maker of Kimi and the open-weight Kimi K2 models, valued at $20B in 2026.
  • Ndea — San Francisco AI research lab pursuing AGI via program synthesis, led by Keras creator Francois Chollet and Zapier veteran Mike Knoop, team of about 15.
  • OpenAI — OpenAI builds the GPT-5.6 model family (Sol, Terra, Luna), o3, ChatGPT (900M+ weekly users), and the OpenAI API. Closed a $122B round at an $852B valuation in March 2026, the largest private funding round in history.
  • Stability AI — Stability AI, founded 2019 in London, built Stable Diffusion, an open-source image model downloaded 350M times, with $225M raised and a $1B valuation.
  • Z.ai — Z.ai (formerly Zhipu AI) was founded in 2019 from Tsinghua University, IPO'd on Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2026 at a $6.55B valuation, and ships the 744B MoE GLM series under MIT license.
  • xAI — Elon Musk's AI company (roughly 4,000 to 4,900 employees) builds the Grok models and merged into SpaceX, taking the combined business public on Nasdaq as the largest IPO on record.

Frequently asked questions

How is the Research Lab leaderboard ranked?

By how many people actually open each profile page. The top five most viewed companies in this section are shown, refreshed continuously from real traffic. No editorial overrides, no paid bumps.

Can I filter by pricing or compliance?

Yes. Use the sidebar to apply filters across pricing tier, architecture, runtime capability and compliance attestation. Selections are reflected in the URL so the filtered view can be shared.

Are open source options included?

Yes. Open weights and open source entries are listed alongside proprietary ones. Pick the Open Source value in the Architecture filter to restrict the view to open licence options.