Madrona Venture Group released its 2025 IA40, an annual ranking that spotlights 40 privately held companies building artificial-intelligence and generative-AI applications, together with five up-and-coming “enabler” startups. The initiative, produced in partnership with the New York Stock Exchange, AWS Startups, Microsoft and Google Cloud, divides winners into early-, mid- and growth-stage categories as well as stage-agnostic infrastructure providers. This year’s cohort features high-profile names such as Anthropic, LangChain and Vercel, alongside Seattle-area newcomers Clarify, Dropzone AI and Statsig. Productivity software maker Fireflies.ai and human-resources platform Mercor were also included after recent funding rounds backed by investors including Menlo Ventures and Benchmark. Madrona said the list was compiled from more than 340 nominations submitted by 70 venture investors at 54 firms. Final rankings combined investor voting with PitchBook’s Venture Exit Predictor, which weighs metrics such as deal size, employee count and investor base. The IA40 is intended to help corporate technology buyers and investors track the startups most likely to shape the next wave of intelligent applications.