Products changed while the research was running. One inventory reordering product and one agent builder shut down while the research was running, and one more has gone since: ChatGPT agent mode, which OpenAI retired after this research and before this was published. It is on What changed. One voice platform that started out selling to small businesses now publishes contracts from $30,000 a year. One AI calling company from 2024 no longer sells a voice agent. Three products changed the name they trade under.
New companies keep arriving, but few sell to owners directly. We looked at 538 recent companies from the best-known startup accelerator and checked each one’s home page for a price or a sign-up you complete yourself. Seven passed. Most are building parts for other software companies, services where people do the work with AI, or software for a single industry sold through a sales call. Of 107 newly launched companies we read closely, about half sell only through a demo, a large contract or an invitation.