Gold Performers
The Gold Performers are the at-scale software and hardware companies whose compute systems run training and inference models in Hyperscale data centers. Their solutions are applicable across nearly every industry and government use case. They are positioned alongside the Platinum Performers building AI infrastructure; in the current phase of the IT industry, the two categories are interdependent and cannot be evaluated in isolation. Billions of dollars are being deployed across this ecosystem, with integration centered around leading model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. NEA evaluates both public and private companies in this tier, with particular attention to financing structures, investor participation, and strategic partnership agreements that signal competitive positioning.
Open AI PBC, Public Benefit Corporation
ChatGPT is a household name. Contrary to the financial press, OpenAI is not 49% owned by Microsoft. MSFT has about a 27% stake in the company, and employees own a similar amount. This in no way implies that MSFT has controlling interest or 'significant influence' impacting the ability of MSFT or other outsider the ability to scoop them up in a hostile takeover. ChatGPT Recently completed another round with SoftBank, Amazon and Nvidia totalling $110B. Although there's some reasonable concern that this investment fits the pattern of the 'circular financing' among these companies over the past six months. There's a pretty large contingent thinking this behavior is not unlike building a house of cards. Jury is still out in NEA's opinion.
ARM Holdings, American Depository Shares ( NASDAQ: ARM )
ARM reported record revenue for the quarter ending Feb 4, 2026, achieving $1.24B top line growth of 26% Y/Y and a non-GAAP EPS of $0.43 beating consensus analyst estimates by 2 cents a share. Arm projects that its CPU market share in data centers will reach 50% by the end of 2026 as hyperscalers move toward purpose-built AI infrastructure. ARM Holdings solutions are proprietary, meaning it’s not open source code. But the architecture, supporting inference AI compute, does the heavy lifting behind more specialized ASIC chips (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) supporting Google’s rollout of Ironwood, TPUv7 for example. Inference chips will be more prevalent in the news as the ‘next big thing’ in coming months.
Anthrop\c PBC, Public Benefit Corporation
Anthrop\c has been very successful with their Generative AI program Claude, particularly among programmers because it's always been an open source platform. It competes directly with ChatGPT and Gemini 3.1 Pro. Despite the recent snub by the US Government, the company must be included in any conversation about the largest and most capable AI software companies. What's said outwardly is that A\nthropic coding poses a security threat. More likely, in terms of partnering with the US government, there wasn’t room for two at-scale “AI Buddies” with the current administration. Nonetheless, they are a formidable competitor exactly because they are open source – a choice that’s worked time and time again with software companies.
Databricks, Privately Held
Databricks combines data engineering, analytics, and machine-learning on a unified “lakehouse” architecture — widely adopted for enterprise AI deployment and generative AI tooling. Its valuation has reached the tens of billions of dollars in recent funding rounds, reflecting its strategic role in large-scale AI applications across industries. Thrive Capital — co-leader on a massive late-stage fundraising round with Andreessen Horowitz (including a $10B Series J), positioned themselves as major backers in the Databrick's growth trajectory. This funding round pushes the valuation to over $100B. Both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs fill out the attention the company receives from large, institutional investment banks.
Perplexity AI, Privately Held
Perplexity is probably the most rapid-scaling startup in this space. And should be. Jeff Bezos and Nvidia back them financially. With $500M raised in June 2025 and another $200M tranche raised in September, the implied valuation for Perplexity is $20B. So what's the fuss? Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine. And as Google clearly demostrates, it's not a big stretch from 'search/querry' to 'prompt' - with an efficient LLM. Perplexity’s market performance has been exceptional, with a 400% year-over-year revenue growth from $20 million in 2024 to $100 million in 2025. The company’s monthly search queries have surged from 230 million in August 2024 to 780 million in May 2025.
Mistral AI, Privately Held
Mistral AI, a French startup, employs over 800 people, and completed their most recent Series C funding round raising €1.7B from ASML (the Dutch chip designer) and Nvida. The former was the lead financier for this round placing €1.3B. This puts a valuation on the company at nearly €14B. Management is of the belief, as many startups are, that they want to upset the 'norm' in the business of AI which is dominated by a few very large vendors. The strategy is to make cutting edge AI technology 'available to all' by maintaining a strictly open source developers environment, in comparision to their proprietary platform Big Brothers in AI (OpenAI, Anthropic).