CB Insights’ 2025 Future Tech Hotshots include 10 AI infrastructure companies recognized as among the startups poised to make the biggest impact in the coming years.
This highlights how AI infrastructure is becoming a focus for both investors and enterprises due to the surge in demand for scalable and efficient AI platforms that can power next-generation applications.
Future Tech Hotshots 2025, released in October, profiles the 45 startups most likely to achieve significant impact and strong exits over the next five to 10 years. The list is based on CB Insights’ proprietary data and Mosaic Score, which assesses a company’s health, growth and potential for success, along with criteria such as commercial maturity, business relationships and funding.
This year’s list reveals that AI infrastructure is emerging as a defining priority for the industry. In particular, there is a clear focus on agent AI, reflected in the participation of startups such as AI agent testing platform Coval, multi-agent orchestration platform Questflow, and agent master data management platform Syncari.
These ventures are building the foundational tools to develop and incorporate AI into workflows, enabling the next wave of autonomous, high-performance applications that will reshape the way businesses operate.
Ori
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in London, Ori is a leading AI infrastructure provider providing AI computing resources and services to large enterprises, enterprises, and fast-growing AI scale-ups. It combines graphics processing unit (GPU) computing with a flexible software layer that optimizes resource utilization to help teams efficiently build and scale AI workloads. Its AI-native infrastructure is designed to meet the demands of training, inferring, and deploying AI models at scale while prioritizing scalability, flexibility, and efficiency across the industry.
Ori is based in more than 20 locations, primarily in North America and Europe. In February, the company secured a strategic investment from Wa’ed Ventures to accelerate its expansion in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Localization in Saudi Arabia begins with the launch of a regional subsidiary based in Riyadh.
Ori’s commercial maturity score is 3 out of 5, indicating that it is in the deployment stage of expanding commercial distribution. Its Mosaic score has increased by 352 points over the past year and now stands at 806 out of 1,000.
star cloud
Founded in 2024 and headquartered in the United States, Starcloud develops GPU computing clusters in low Earth orbit to deliver high-performance AI computing for a wide range of applications. The company aims to revolutionize AI training and large-scale computing capabilities by harnessing the energy resources and cooling efficiency of space.
Starcloud recently launched the first Nvidia H100 into space. The company raised a US$21 million seed round in late 2024 to enable the launch of multiple satellites.
Backed by Y Combinator, In-Q-Tel, NFX and others, Starcloud is scheduled to launch a demonstrator mission in late 2025 with GPUs 100 times more powerful than those ever flown in orbit, with a full micro datacenter expected to be completed in 2026.
Starcloud has a commercial maturity score of 2 out of 5 and is still in the validation phase as they continue to test and improve their product. Mosaic score is 792 out of 1,000, an increase of 58 points over the past year.
Shinkari
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in the US, Syncari claims to be the first agent-based master data management (MDM) platform built for the AI era. The platform integrates, manages, and synchronizes data in real-time to create structured, reliable, AI-enabled pipelines for large-scale language models (LLMs), copilots, and autonomous agents. By eliminating silos and operating trust at scale, organizations can accelerate intelligent decision-making and unlock the full potential of their data.
Syncari’s key features include an AI-native architecture with a semantic layer and continuous data quality, patented multi-way sync for real-time governance, 50x faster development than traditional MDM, over 100 smart connectors, software development kits (SDKs), application programming interfaces (APIs), and webhooks for seamless enterprise integration.
Syncari says it supports Fortune 1,000 companies across technology, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing, and claims its platform manages more than 2 trillion data operations.
It completed a Series B funding round in September.
Syncari has a commercial maturity score of 3 out of 5 and is in the deployment stage with growing commercial distribution. Mosaic score is 790 out of 1,000, an increase of 308 points over the past year.
quest flow
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in the United States, Questflow is an orchestration layer for the emerging multi-agent economy. The company’s core innovation, Multi-Agent Orchestration Protocol (MAOP), enables users to seamlessly coordinate and communicate multiple AI agents, automate human tasks, and transact with each other in real-time on-chain with built-in human oversight of key decisions.
The technology supports task orchestration by enabling fleets of AI agents to perform complex multi-step tasks across platforms, decentralized applications (dApps), and protocols, and supports token orchestration by enabling micropayments between agents through on-chain agent wallets.
Questflow gained early attention and was picked up by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Cohere, MongoDB, and selected by Google for Startups. After its release, it was also selected as Product Hunt’s Product of the Day. In July, the company raised $6.5 million in a seed funding round to expand ecosystem incentives and prepare MAOP for broader developer adoption.
Questflow has a commercial maturity score of 3 out of 5, meaning it is in the adoption stage with growing commercial distribution. Mosaic score is 776 out of 1,000, an increase of 236 points over the past year.
Delphi
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in the United States, Delphi is a digital cloning platform designed to bridge the gap between personalized mentorship and scalable communications. The platform allows professionals such as authors, coaches, CEOs, and thought leaders to replicate their unique thought processes, communication styles, knowledge, opinions, and expertise. It supports multiple communication media such as text, audio, and even video, providing a versatile solution for personal digital reproduction.
Delphi raised $16 million in Series A in July and had a commercial maturity score of 2 out of 5. We are still in the validation phase and are currently testing and redefining the product. The startup has a Mosaic score of 770 out of 1,000, an increase of 169 points over the past year.
exercise
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in the United States, Exa is an AI research institute re-engineering search for the AI era.
Exa uses the same technology as ChatGPT to train an embedding model to turn web pages into lists of numbers called embeddings. The result is a technology that embeds the power of LLM into the search process itself, making search smarter than a keyword approach like Google.
To date, thousands of companies and developers have integrated Exa, from AI writing assistants that help students cite relevant papers, to venture capital (VC) firms that source highly specialized startups, to AI research teams at companies like Databricks that assemble large, high-quality training datasets.
Exa raised $85 million in Series B in September at a valuation of $700 million. The startup has a commercial maturity of 2 out of 5 and is still in the validation phase, currently testing and redefining its product. Mosaic score is 767 out of 1,000, an increase of 100 points in the past year.
finwave semiconductor
Founded in 2012 and originating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Finwave Semiconductor is a fabless semiconductor company. The company develops advanced gallium nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) transistor technology for applications ranging from RF communications and 5G and 6G mobile infrastructure to medical devices and cloud computing, manufacturing 3D GaN transistors, enhancement mode PAs, and high-power RF switches on silicon wafers.
Finwave Semiconductor raised $8.2 million in May to accelerate commercialization of GaN-on-Si for high-power RF applications, bringing total funding to approximately $33 million.
The company has a commercial maturity score of 3 out of 5, meaning it is in the deployment stage with expanded commercial distribution. Mosaic score is 744 out of 1,000, an increase of 116 points over the past year.
Koval
Founded in 2024 and headquartered in the United States, Coval provides simulation and evaluation infrastructure for voice and chat AI companies building production-ready autonomous agents. Coval uses simulation and evaluation techniques inspired by the self-driving vehicle industry to improve test coverage, accelerate development, and verify consistent agent performance. This allows businesses to not only create agents that delight their customers, but also deploy them faster and with absolute confidence in their performance.
Coval has a commercial maturity score of 3 out of 5 and is in the deployment stage with growing commercial distribution. Mosaic score is 743 out of 1,000, an increase of 87 points in the past year.
scintill photonics
Scintil Photonics is a global leader in integrated photonic system-on-chip (PSoC) solutions for AI factories.
Scintil Photonics uses its proprietary heterogeneous integration process SHIP to deliver high-performance optical interconnects to meet the power and bandwidth demands of large-scale GPU clusters enabled by next-generation co-packaged optics (CPO).
The company’s product, LEAF Light, is a single-chip DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) native light engine for high-density optical connectivity.
Scintil Photonics’ solutions are purpose-built to meet the high-bandwidth, low-latency, and high-density demands of next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering the scale, efficiency, and performance needed for tomorrow’s most powerful GPU clusters.
Headquartered in Grenoble, France, with operations in North America, Sintil Photonics is expanding globally to support the evolving needs of AI infrastructure. In September, the company raised $58 million to expand hiring in France and abroad, including the United States, accelerate production, and deepen its international presence.
Rhino federated computing
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Boston with a research and development (R&D) center in Tel Aviv, Rhino Federated Computing has built a trusted end-to-end technology stack for federated AI in regulated industries. This enables data-driven collaboration across organizational and geographic boundaries, allowing enterprises to securely scale AI and analytics across increasingly larger networks.
Rhino Federated Computing is already powering key use cases, including enabling federated generative AI (genAI) capabilities in the biopharmaceutical industry, supporting healthcare organizations in building data harmonization and federated collaboration infrastructure, and helping financial institutions fight fraud and financial crime.
The company raised $15 million in Series A in May to expand its capabilities to more customers and regulatory areas.
It has a commercial maturity score of 3 out of 5 and is currently in the implementation stage with growing commercial distribution. Mosaic score is 708 out of 1,000, a drop of 37 points over the past year.
Featured image: Based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Freepik, compiled by Fintech News Switzerland
