5 AI-based Business Ideas for Your Startup

The amount of investment in AI-based startups has been growing since 2014. However, businesses have begun to ramp up efforts to find worthwhile ideas that can evolve into lucrative startups in 2022. Let’s take a look at this through a quarter of market figures.

According to Statista, the total funding of AI startup companies has grown from 4.25 billion dollars in 2014 to 38 billion dollars in 2021. This financing would strengthen business productivity – that’s one of the reasons why 47% of enterprises introduce AI strategy to develop their mobile applications. 

Companies believe that AI provides their offerings with a competitive advantage, irrespective of the field of their activity. Currently, AI involves such areas as retail, healthcare, fintech, transport and logistics, advanced electronics, oil and gas, media and entertainment, etc. Given that, a natural question arises: What AI-based startups have the greatest potential? Let’s find out!

Promising areas of AI for startup founders

Computer vision 

Computer vision helps systems to analyze and understand images, videos, and other visual materials. The market size of computer vision is predicted to reach 41.11 billion dollars by 2030, according to Allied Market Reach, though other sources mention much higher numbers. 

Computer vision, in this context, should be interpreted as a set of the following areas:

• Object detection
• Event detection
• Video tracking
• Object recognition
• 3D pose estimation
• Optical character recognition

There are some exciting examples of startups with computer vision at their core, such as viso.ai, Nauto, OCR Labs. 

Viso.ai is a no-code/low-code platform for computer vision app development. It can connect a camera with a deep learning model within a simple editor. There is no need to be proficient in software development to build and deploy an application with this further monitoring and scaling of the infrastructure. Applications developed via Viso.ai are based on pre-built plugins. This allows companies to accelerate building computer vision solutions by a factor of 10.

Viso Suite consists of tools not only for building visual AI applications but for their distribution and operation. Out-of-the-box components also enable users to deploy and manage edge devices – they can remotely debug and troubleshoot these devices. Moreover, solutions in Viso Suite are scalable and may be improved through customization, docker containers, and Business Intelligence software integration. 

Nauto is an AI safety platform for drivers that predicts and prevents collisions. It reduces risks in the traffic ecosystem by applying ML algorithms that have a positive impact on driver behavior. Statistics show that Nauto has helped to prevent 70 000+ collisions, which resulted in 30 million dollars in savings. How does it work? A dual-facing camera combined with sensors identifies drowsy or distracted driving. The system alerts a driver in advance, thus preventing accidents.

OCR Labs is the solution for verifying users in the blink of an eye based on OCR with deep learning. To go through the identification procedure, the user should leverage a smartphone and an ID card. Image recognition and deep learning technologies enable OCR Labs to check conformity between the face and provided document. The solution is suitable for the fintech business, VOI (verification of identity), user onboarding in the gaming area, the insurance industry, identity verification for marketplaces, and telecommunications.

Natural Language Processing

The term Natural Language Processing (NLP) describes the ability of machines to interpret human language. According to Mordor Intelligence, the NLP market will reach 48.46 billion dollars by 2025, merging different technologies, namely, speech recognition, machine translation, OCR, and chatbots.     

World-renowned startups such as Grammarly, Mobvoi, Observe.AI prove that NLP deserves particular attention and may serve as the core technology for platforms involved in translation, text classification, or spell-check. 

Grammarly is based on data science, machine learning, core infrastructure, extensions, and so on, but the NLP module is what enables the writing assistant to correct mistakes and inaccuracies in writing. There are a bunch of technologies under the hood, and AI allows finding and correcting errors with the help of transformer language models. Being founded as a startup 13 years ago, Grammarly’s valuation these days reaches 13 billion dollars.      

Mobvoi is an AI company that has been working on voice interaction since 2012 while putting emphasis on the communication between man and machine. A set of technologies lying at the core of Mobvoi includes automatic speech recognition (ASR), AI production of human speech, a vertical search as a branch of deep NLP, and so on. Mobvoi produces hardware, from smartwatches to earphones and AI recorders, for which mentioned AI software is being applied.            

Observe.AI is an AI platform for contact centers that enables repeatable task automation, optimizing the operator workload. Its implementation fosters revenue and operational efficiency growth through the AI speech recognition, evaluations, and coaching of employees. To date, Observe.AI is one of the most promising AI startups with 213 million dollars raised funding in 2022. 

Generative-adversarial network (GAN)

Generative-adversarial network (GAN) appeared as a class of ML models in 2014. Formed from two competitive networks, it learns to create new data based on the training set. This approach permanently improves the potential of the generator that creates more sophisticated samples. Let’s consider the most prominent startups associated with GANs. 

Synthesia serves for video creation and helps produce training, how-to, and other types of outputs. To generate a video, users should follow a few simple steps: choose a template, select an avatar, and type in text that will be turned into speech in the preferred language and accent. Synthesia is available in the form of a web-based application with an intuitive interface that allows users to produce a video in five minutes. The startup raised 17 million dollars in series A funding in 2022. 

GAN as technology may also empower companies to work on startups related to age synthesis and text-to-image synthesis. Age synthesis foresees taking a person’s image as an input and rerendering it with natural aging. Text to image synthesis describes the transformational approach of turning the text description into an image, which requires diversity, realism, and semantic alignment.           

Deep Learning

According to BCC Research, the global deep learning market is projected to reach 60 million dollars by 2025. This technology lies behind voice control in gadgets, driverless cars, medical applications that detect illnesses, and industrial automation.

Startup software development trends of 2022 indicate that deep learning as part of AI may give a startup product extra market value. Here is the list of successful startups that have managed to overcome competitors in the area of deep learning: Delta AI, Anodot, Zest.ai.

Delta AI monitors social media and checks relevant trends in product usage. The platform provides companies with insights, allowing them to produce meaningful products and apply efficient marketing strategies. 

Anodot offers clients a module for AI analytics to assess data, and identify anomalies and important business incidents. With this tool, businesses take careful decisions with regard to the current situation. Anodot advantages are simplicity of integration and autonomy. 

Zest.ai is designed for intelligent credit model management. A suite of applications allows for building fast and accurate credit models, introducing automated analysis and validation to bring to life AI-driven lending.  

Robotics

According to Mordor Intelligence, the global robotics market will reach 74.1 billion dollars by 2026. An industrial assembly line is just one of many examples of robotics applications. Hardware is becoming cheaper, but the software may be a bottleneck for automation, which relates to the limitations of programming models. However, open-source development has a positive impact on the pace of robot implementation. Let’s take a look at bright startups in the area of robotics. 

Skydio is a drone manufacturer from the U.S. It was founded 8 years ago. Skydio applies 3D scan technologies to autonomously capture structure and scenes with high resolution. The autonomy module helps drones understand what surrounds them, thus improving basic flight technology.

Zipline is the provider of autonomous delivery systems with distribution centers all across the globe that has delivered more than 280 000 packages.  

Rethink Robotics develops collaborative robotic solutions to enable automating through modern hardware and software implementation. The German company collaborates with Siemens and universities to deliver even more proficient and meaningful robotics solutions. 

Prospects of AI-based startups

In the future, AI will introduce even more thorough reform of the world and existing businesses. We can see emerging technologies serving as boosters for startups. New AI-based startups in the areas of vehicle autonomy, e-learning, manufacturing, real estate, and surveillance appear regularly. Anyway, one thing is clear: the future can bring anything, but there will definitely be artificial intelligence.