THE AI LABS WORTH WATCHING

Find the labs
before everyone else.

A practical field guide to 200 independent AI labs. Skip the household names, compare the signals, and find the teams whose work is starting to matter.

Explore labs ↓How the list works

THE SHORTLIST

200labs in the field guide

50worth watching now

15breakouts to open first

8frontiers covered

The obvious leaders are kept for context, then moved out of the discovery queue. This list is for finding the next labs to follow.

01 Breakout company profiles

THE DISCOVERY QUEUE

Who should you follow next?

50 labs match this cut. Start with Rising 50, hide the obvious names, and use the cards to decide who deserves a closer look.

⌕ModalityEntitySort by

Language/TextMultimodalVision/ImageAudio/SpeechRetrieval/EmbeddingsVideo3D/Robotics/RLTime series/Tabular

Rank / lab	Focus	HF downloads	Followers	GitHub stars	Models	Last signal
MarqoRising #01 · Venture candidate	Vision/Image	661.6K17.4K / model	159HF audience	5.4Kdeveloper reach	3816 datasets	0d agomarqo-fashionSigLIP · 354.3K HF pulls
NeuMLRising #02 · Venture candidate	Retrieval/Embeddings+1 more	980.9K11.7K / model	173HF audience	18.6Kdeveloper reach	8419 datasets	0d agopubmedbert-base-embeddings · 815.7K HF pulls
NX-AIRising #03 · Venture candidate	Time series/Tabular	345.7K43.2K / model	183HF audience	3.5Kdeveloper reach	80 datasets	0d agoTiRex · 328.8K HF pulls
omlabRising #04 · Venture candidate	Multimodal+1 more	39.7K4K / model	161HF audience	12.3Kdeveloper reach	1012 datasets	1d agoomdet-turbo-swin-tiny-hf · 37.6K HF pulls
argmaxincRising #05 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech	11.7M434.6K / model	219HF audience	7.7Kdeveloper reach	2729 datasets	1d agowhisperkit-coreml · 11.5M HF pulls
nineninesixRising #06 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech+2 more	76.2K2.7K / model	209HF audience	754developer reach	2812 datasets	3d agogepard-1.0 · 70.6K HF pulls
mixedbread-aiRising #07 · Venture candidate	Retrieval/Embeddings	4.1M344.6K / model	422HF audience	5.2Kdeveloper reach	1212 datasets	1d agomxbai-embed-large-v1 · 3.0M HF pulls
kotoba-techRising #08 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech+1 more	45.2K2.8K / model	190HF audience	274developer reach	164 datasets	1d agokotoba-whisper-v2.2 · 16.7K HF pulls
second-stateRising #09 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+4 more	370.7K1.3K / model	296HF audience	8.4Kdeveloper reach	2950 datasets	0d agoAll-MiniLM-L6-v2-Embedding-GGUF · 113.0K HF pulls
open-gigaaiRising #10 · Venture candidate	Video+1 more	9.8K574.7 / model	186HF audience	9.6Kdeveloper reach	174 datasets	0d agoGigaBrain-0.7-3.5B-Base · 4.6K HF pulls
bespokelabsRising #11 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	9.4K348 / model	195HF audience	1.9Kdeveloper reach	2723 datasets	1d agoBespoke-Stratos-17k · 19.6K HF pulls
HiDream-aiRising #12 · Venture candidate	Multimodal+2 more	104.1K7.4K / model	1.4KHF audience	5.4Kdeveloper reach	145 datasets	1d agoHiDream-I1-Fast · 88.8K HF pulls
lemuralabsRising #13 · Venture candidate	Multimodal+2 more	129.3K2.8K / model	172HF audience	—unresolved	460 datasets	12d agoLlama-3.2-3B-Uncensored-GGUF · 25.8K HF pulls
orcarouterRising #14 · Venture candidate	Multimodal+1 more	905K43.1K / model	1.7KHF audience	884developer reach	211 datasets	0d agoQwen3.8-27B-Uncensored-FP8 · 316.1K HF pulls
segmindRising #15 · Venture candidate	Vision/Image	38.8K3.2K / model	162HF audience	1.3Kdeveloper reach	120 datasets	7d agoSSD-1B · 15.8K HF pulls
joyfoxRising #16 · Venture candidate	Vision/Image+2 more	123.1K2.5K / model	326HF audience	145developer reach	500 datasets	1d agoLTX2.3-ICEdit-Insight · 48.2K HF pulls
defogRising #17 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	18.4K2.6K / model	231HF audience	5.3Kdeveloper reach	72 datasets	0d agosqlcoder-7b-2 · 13.5K HF pulls
PrunaAIRising #18 · Venture candidate	Vision/Image+1 more	90.9K568.4 / model	392HF audience	1.7Kdeveloper reach	1606 datasets	0d agoPhi-3-mini-4k-instruct-GGUF-Imatrix-smashed · 11.7K HF pulls
VAGOsolutionsRising #19 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+3 more	29K630 / model	189HF audience	43developer reach	464 datasets	6d agoLlama-3-SauerkrautLM-8b-Instruct · 9.6K HF pulls
typhoon-aiRising #20 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+1 more	834.7K10.6K / model	393HF audience	—unresolved	7933 datasets	3d agotyphoon-ocr-3b · 377.7K HF pulls
datalab-toRising #21 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	5.5M364.6K / model	534HF audience	74.7Kdeveloper reach	159 datasets	2d agochandra-ocr-2 · 2.9M HF pulls
cyankiwiRising #22 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+1 more	13.4M41.9K / model	796HF audience	—unresolved	3203 datasets	2d agogemma-4-26B-A4B-it-AWQ-4bit · 2.4M HF pulls
numindRising #23 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+3 more	627.8K13.4K / model	678HF audience	487developer reach	472 datasets	8d agoNuMarkdown-8B-Thinking · 360.2K HF pulls
Cactus-ComputeRising #24 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+3 more	48.1K788.1 / model	417HF audience	16.8Kdeveloper reach	613 datasets	0d agoneedle2 · 43.7K HF pulls
neuphonicRising #25 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech	195.7K8.2K / model	517HF audience	6.5Kdeveloper reach	241 datasets	0d agoneucodec · 84.7K HF pulls
MenloRising #26 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+2 more	7.2K143.6 / model	690HF audience	2.1Kdeveloper reach	5040 datasets	3d agoJan-nano-128k-gguf · 2.7K HF pulls
mindlab-researchRising #27 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	2.3K287.6 / model	234HF audience	471developer reach	81 datasets	0d agoMixture-of-LoRA-Harness · 195 GitHub stars
PleIAsRising #28 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	985.8K31.8K / model	798HF audience	—unresolved	3162 datasets	0d agoPleias-350m-Preview · 330.9K HF pulls
zeroentropyRising #29 · Venture candidate	Retrieval/Embeddings	655.2K131K / model	212HF audience	640developer reach	51 datasets	41d agozerank-2-reranker · 636.2K HF pulls
SentientAGIRising #30 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	71.6K8K / model	273HF audience	14Kdeveloper reach	91 datasets	9d agoDobby-Mini-Unhinged-Llama-3.1-8B · 71.1K HF pulls
deepgroveRising #31 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	454.2K113.5K / model	286HF audience	—unresolved	40 datasets	19d agomaple-preview-GGUF · 444.7K HF pulls
OsaurusAIRising #32 · Venture candidate	Multimodal+3 more	29.5K220.5 / model	210HF audience	—unresolved	1340 datasets	1d agoDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-JANG · 3.7K HF pulls
trillionlabsRising #33 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+1 more	5.8K182.1 / model	233HF audience	133developer reach	3211 datasets	1d agoTheBioCollection · 1.5K HF pulls
SupertoneRising #34 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech	30.4K10.1K / model	603HF audience	14.1Kdeveloper reach	30 datasets	8d agosupertonic-3 · 28.0K HF pulls
osmosis-aiRising #35 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	14.4K4.8K / model	171HF audience	89developer reach	30 datasets	0d agoOsmosis-Structure-0.6B · 12.5K HF pulls
vidoreRising #36 · Venture candidate	Retrieval/Embeddings	899.5K20K / model	505HF audience	—unresolved	4592 datasets	13d agocolqwen2-v1.0 · 351.0K HF pulls
EschaLabsRising #37 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	10.6K2.6K / model	223HF audience	16developer reach	40 datasets	0d agoQwen3.6-35B-A3B-Escha-W2 · 6.8K HF pulls
AtomicChatRising #38 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+1 more	1M11K / model	492HF audience	4.8Kdeveloper reach	9210 datasets	0d agoQwen3.8-27B-GGUF · 285.5K HF pulls
tensorblockRising #39 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+4 more	175K35.4 / model	351HF audience	1.1Kdeveloper reach	4.9K0 datasets	0d agoDeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite-Instruct-GGUF · 3.4K HF pulls
Intelligent-InternetRising #40 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	2.3K259.6 / model	360HF audience	5.4Kdeveloper reach	920 datasets	3d agowikipedia_en · 7.2K HF pulls
Audio8Rising #41 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech	53.3K4.1K / model	317HF audience	—unresolved	133 datasets	6d agoAudio8-TTS-Preview-0.6b · 20.5K HF pulls
InternScienceRising #42 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+1 more	713.9K47.6K / model	563HF audience	—unresolved	1523 datasets	37d agoAgents-A1-4B · 323.7K HF pulls
novitaRising #43 · Venture candidate	Language/Text	4.2K300.8 / model	390HF audience	1.5Kdeveloper reach	141 datasets	0d agokimi-k2.7-code-eagle3-mla · 3.7K HF pulls
histaiRising #44 · Venture candidate	Vision/Image	60.8K8.7K / model	187HF audience	193developer reach	714 datasets	90d agohibou-L · 53.5K HF pulls
FireRedTeamRising #45 · Venture candidate	Audio/Speech+1 more	72.9K3K / model	803HF audience	13Kdeveloper reach	242 datasets	8d agoFireRed-Image-Edit-1.0 · 30.2K HF pulls
manycore-researchRising #46 · Venture candidate	3D/Robotics/RL+1 more	9.6K1.1K / model	425HF audience	5.8Kdeveloper reach	95 datasets	2d agoSpatialLM1.1-Qwen-0.5B · 7.5K HF pulls
Motif-TechnologiesRising #47 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+3 more	15.2K893.6 / model	489HF audience	—unresolved	170 datasets	2d agoMotif-3 · 5.1K HF pulls
VIDraftRising #48 · Venture candidate	Language/Text+2 more	1.2K29.5 / model	253HF audience	—unresolved	408 datasets	0d agoActive 1d ago

THE RISING-STAR LENS

A list for discovery, not consensus.

The signal rewards usage outrunning audience, reach per model, fresh publishing, active GitHub work, and evidence across modalities. Recognizable category leaders stay visible as context but cannot crowd the discovery queue.

Use Breakout 15 for the quickest scan, Rising 50 for active coverage, frontier research for long-term bets, and the full universe when you want the map.

28%Audience gap

22%Reach / model

18%HF recency

12%GitHub shipping

10%Impact

10%Modality breadth

This score detects precursor signals in a September 2026 snapshot; it is not a measured growth rate. Repeated snapshots are required to validate acceleration. Public HF members are not headcount, and downloads are not revenue or retained usage.