Top Private AI Companies by Revenue 2026: Anthropic $65B, OpenAI ~$50B, Databricks $7B

Anthropic leads private AI companies by revenue with a $65 billion run rate at the end of July 2026, ahead of OpenAI at about $50 billion in late September. Databricks is a distant third at $7 billion, and Mercor is fourth at $2 billion-plus.

This page ranks the 10 private AI companies with the largest revenue figures they or the press have reported, as of October 16, 2026. Each row carries its date and a link to the report it comes from, because these numbers move every month and are rarely measured the same way. The short version: two model labs account for about nine-tenths of the combined total, and the remaining eight, from AI data marketplace Mercor to customer-service agent maker Sierra, are growing fast from far smaller bases.

Top private AI companies by revenue in 2026, ranked

The top private AI companies by revenue in 2026 are Anthropic ($65 billion run rate, July), OpenAI (about $50 billion, September), Databricks ($7 billion, August), Mercor ($2 billion-plus gross, June) and Perplexity (more than $750 million, August). ElevenLabs, Lovable, Harvey, Glean and Sierra complete the top 10, each between $200 million and $600 million.

How we counted: latest company-stated or press-reported annualized revenue (run rate or ARR) for privately held AI-first companies; figures dated May to September 2026; 10 companies; as of October 16, 2026. Companies now inside public companies are excluded.

Is Anthropic or OpenAI bigger by revenue?

On the figures each company has put out, Anthropic is bigger: its annualized revenue run rate "surpassed $65 billion at the end of July" 2026, up from $47 billion in May and $9 billion at the end of 2025, TechCrunch reported on August 17, 2026. The same report gave a projected 2026 full-year range of $100 billion to $120 billion and a $965 billion valuation.

OpenAI's annualized revenue was about $50 billion in late September 2026, the Financial Times reported, with CNBC detail on October 8, as Yahoo Finance summarized. A $68 billion figure circulated earlier "incorporated gross revenue from partner companies, a methodology investors used to put OpenAI's performance on equal footing with Anthropic." So the ranking holds on reported numbers, but the gap is narrower on a like-for-like basis. Our gross vs net ARR explainer walks through the difference, and the OpenAI revenue tracker has the month-by-month path.

Which AI companies come after the big two?

Databricks is the only other company above $5 billion. It reported "$7 billion of annualized run rate revenue, which is currently growing at 80%" when it raised $5 billion at a $190 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on August 13, 2026, and it says it is cash-flow positive. It is a data platform as much as an AI company, which is why some lists leave it out; we include it because AI workloads drive its growth.

Mercor, which supplies expert contractors who train AI models, said its annualized run rate crossed $2 billion, double the figure from four months earlier, per TechCrunch on July 9, 2026; that is gross revenue, before contractor pay. Perplexity's annualized revenue rose to more than $750 million from less than $250 million at the start of the year, The Information reported in August, as carried by Yahoo Finance.

ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski told TechCrunch on September 24, 2026, "We are now $600 million in ARR." Lovable hit $500 million in annualized run rate in June and raised $400 million at $13.3 billion in August, TechCrunch reported. Harvey passed $400 million in ARR when it closed $550 million at $15.6 billion on September 9, Tech Times reported. Glean reached $300 million ARR in May and Sierra $200 million in late May, both per TechCrunch's July 8 roundup.

How We Ranked These

We ranked on one criterion: the latest annualized revenue figure (run rate or ARR) that a company stated or that a named outlet reported, using the figure exactly as reported. Companies had to be privately held and AI-first. xAI is excluded because it merged into SpaceX, as Yahoo Finance reported, and Cursor is excluded because SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor in August 2026. Scale AI is left out because we could not re-fetch a current revenue figure for it. Valuations are the latest priced round or reported tender, with talks labeled as talks.

What the headline misses

A run rate multiplies a recent month or quarter into a year, so it overstates booked revenue for any company growing this fast, and the companies choose the window. Definitions also differ: Mercor reports gross revenue before paying its contractors, and OpenAI's ~$50 billion excludes partner revenue that Anthropic-style accounting would include. The dates span May to September, so the later figures have a head start. Treat the ranking as an order of magnitude, not a scoreboard, and check each company's own page on the AI valuations dashboard before using a figure.