Ubs Says These Are The Private Ai Companies To Watch Before They Go Public

Databricks, a cloud-based data engineering and analytics platform is high on UBS' list of private tech companies to watch. The bank emphasized the $7 billion in annual recurring revenue it reported in the second quarter, and that it competes with public companies in areas like AI-assisted coding and engineering and agentic applications.

The company has been touted by investors such as Andrew Left, who described it as Palantir's top rival. Databricks is backed by Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, as well as many top names in the venture capital space.

Founded by tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, the defense tech firm has been in the headlines recently, largely due to its focus on autonomous military hardware and AI software for the US military.

This has led to a slew of lucrative defense contracts as the US looks to bolster its capabilities amid war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war.

"Growth has been supported by major U.S. defense awards, including assuming the lead role in the Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System program, which has a potential contract ceiling of up to $22bn, and securing a 10-year, $642.2mn-ceiling counter-UAS IDIQ for systems deployed at U.S. Marine Corps installations," Keirstead wrote.

Canva has emerged as a giant in the graphic design software space for both personal and professional customers. Its AI integration has been praised by users as the company has maneuvers to compete with AI tools from big players like Anthropic.

Keirstead said that his team isn't worried about the graphic design leader being able to compete with larger rivals, particularly given its strong growth statistics.

"Canva ended 2025 with approximately $4B in ARR, 265M+ monthly active users, 31M+ paid users, and roughly 5,000 employees (up from 240M MAUs, 27M paid users, and ~5,000 employees in early 2025)," he said.

This high-profile startup is credited with integrating AI tools into Wall Street workflows by automating financial analysis. The company's head of strategy, a former hedge fund manager, described it as helping eliminate the work that bankers hate doing.

Hebbia operates at the intersection of two high-growth markets: agentic AI for finance and legal AI software.

"Together, these categories imply a core addressable market of approximately $7.2B in 2026, expanding to $46.7B by 2034, before including Hebbia's opportunities in consulting, corporate research, and other knowledge-work functions," UBS said.

Replit has emerged as a leader in the vibe-coding space, offering a platform that lets users generate a working app or website by entering text-only prompts.

While most leading AI agents offer similar features, UBS maintains that the company can hold its own, citing 7x revenue growth potential based on recent company estimates.

"Replit cites over 500k professional users on the platform today with 'millions' of total users," Keirstead noted. "The company expects to cross $1 billion ARR by the end of 2026."

AI-powered personal assistants have suddenly boomed, jump started by Meta's Muse last month. But Instinct has become one of its chief competitors with its agent that perform various tasks and can be addeed to group chats to help coordinate plans and logistics.

UBS estimates that Instinct's total addressable market is likely in the hundreds of billions of dollars, given how many functions the agent can perform, including commerce, communications and travel booking.

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati co-founded this fintech startup in 2025, which has quadrupled in size since its launch, despite losing some talent to Meta. It boasts Nvidia as a strategic investor and has managed to raise $2 billion at a valuation of $12 billion.

"During 2026, the company expanded its research and product portfolio through its NVIDIA and Google Cloud infrastructure agreements, the launch of Inkling and Inkling-Small, and new research programs focused on model customization, human-AI interaction, safety, and reinforcement learning," Keirstead said.

Higgsfield has been described as seeking to become the "Cursor of video." The AI video generation platform provides a wide-ranging suite of tools that UBS sees as giving it an edge in a fast-growing industry.

"Higgsfield operates at the intersection of generative media, creative software, and digital advertising," Keirstead said. "As brands and enterprises increasingly adopt generative AI workflows, the company is positioned within a large and growing TAM."

Legal tech startup Harvey has been at the forefront of the legal industry's AI adoption. The AI-powered legal platform has been quickly growing, making three acquisitions in seven months, viewed as an indication of an industry-wide shift.

UBS noted that Harvey's platform that allows attorneys to automate research, contract analysis and memo drafting, as well as other tasks, is being widely deployed among the AmLaw 10, the US's highest-grossing law firms.

The AI-powered conversational search engine has been making waves in the tech community for years. Perplexity's CEO has said that the company is on track for an IPO in 2028, regardless of what happens with OpenAI and Anthropic's expected offerings.

Perplexity recently passed $750 million in annual recurring revenue, and reported over one hundred million monthly active users across its search engine and AI agents. It is backed by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos and the SoftBank Vision Fund, among others.