Google just announced its first 'Google for Startups' Gemini Founders Forum cohort! Is there anything extraordinary about this list of companies?
The total of 53 startups picked from close to 1000 global applications are all Series A, AI-First ( selling some AI solution), and majority are the Agentic AI startups.
This isn’t some breaking news, or very insightful topic as such. The lists like these of startups joining incubators / accelerators or similar programmes funded by big companies get announced almost everyday in some part of the world. but considering the recent developments in AI, I was particularly curious about the mix, and of the use cases these companies are solving and using Google’s latest models, which is one criteria of course apart for the startups already been generating revenue and backed by VCs or in some cases have some angel investments and at the series A funding level.
Edit - one thing I forgot to add about the AI-first, which here mean having AI at core of the solution, the startup are providing, and since google defined them as is, so I am writing it down but its a tad different from what we discussed in the last post, and what my understanding is, which isn’t just about providing an AI solution but building a company thats truly AI at the core of its business workflow. read it here
What is Gemini Founders Forum?
The Gemini Founders Forum is a new initiative and an exclusive program by Google for Startups, created to support top Series A, AI-driven startups integrating Google’s Gemini models.
Selected founders join a collaborative summit at Google HQ for hands-on technical mentorship, co-designing custom AI roadmaps with Google and DeepMind experts.
Participants receive major cloud credits, early access to Gemini APIs, and deep peer networking. The forum’s goal is to accelerate breakthrough innovation and position Google’s technology at the heart of next-gen AI companies.
so this is more or less “Google for startup” high tier with technical support, resources, mentorship, and visibility and likely can provide an entry point for a strategic partnership as google doesn’t invest directly otherwise, and of course a trip to the HQ.
What this google’s likely handpicked cohort mainly exemplifies is the ongoing convergence of agentic and generative models, defining the next chapter of AI development. the cohort includes solutions that power everything from healthcare automation and legal workflow AI to generative content and supply chain intelligence. I couldn’t say if their ideas are truly competitive in the $1 trillion global AI market? or if these are trailblazers as many seem like first-movers, but it looks like a good set of varied use cases leveraging Gemini’s state-of-the-art stack, and could be helpful to understand where Agentic AI platform solutions could be more effective and where Gen AI should be the way to go.
Agentic vs. Generative
2 weeks ago Microsoft announced its suite of multimodal AI agent-building tools, not sure if its free but but it means any startup using Google or Open AI or any other models can still connect and work with Microsoft’s system and enterprise-level tools through open standards. Now Open AI has just announced the Agentkit directly competing with Microsoft’s and Google’s agentic platforms, aiming to make production-ready AI agents accessible for all developers and organizations, What it means is, big corporations can easily build their own AI agents instead of buying from startups, and this is where the chart above gets interesting. there are 11 startups in the list that are building some kind of agentic AI platform solution -
Agentic AI Startups (11):
Akto: AI agent security solution
Arintra: Autonomous coding for healthcare
Baz: Code review automation platform
Bonsai Robotics: Autonomous farm robots
Fini: Agentic AI for customer support
Frenetic AI: Electrical engineer automation
Genesy: Sales agent SaaS
InstaLILY AI: Multi-agent workflow automation
Lexter: Legal operations automation OS
SpotDraft: Contract automation platform
Zapia AI: Buyer-seller agent over messaging
Gen AI Startups (5):
Clarifeye: Gen AI-ready knowledge warehouse for unstructured data
Darwin AI: Agents for sales/support qualification
Exactly.ai: Private generative AI models for brand visuals
Klleon inc: SDK generative digital humans
PyannoteAI: Speaker diarization for audio/video
All these above developments are happening using Google AI models. with Microsoft now supporting 11,000+ different AI models including googles’ for easier enterprise build the agentic market with, all sort of mix and match, when it comes to who a startup choses to develop their solution with is okay. but it becomes harder to compete - its either specialize or get squeezed out. The key to agentic AI startup success is picking your niche and being amazing at it, not which cloud provider you use.
What startups should do?
Stop trying to build general AI platforms and instead become the expert in one specific thing - like AI for dentists or AI for warehouse management. Since everything now works together through open protocols, startups don’t need to build everything, just be the best at their specialty.
Trend / Use cases breakdown
The markets (generative AI, agentic AI, vertical AI platforms) are enormous and fast-growing, so its interesting to look at the use cases, and sectors for strategic partnership and ecosystem building, and what’s Google’s betting on the next wave of AI-driven business models.
Use case breakdown:
Sales/Customer Support: 8 companies ( b2B sales)
Legal Tech: 3 companies
Audio/Video/Image AI: 4 companies
Automation/Workflow: 2 companies
General AI Platform/Agent: 1 company
Generative AI: 3 companies
Security/Risk/Compliance: 2 companies
Industry-specific AI: 2 companies
Social Dynamics: 1 company
Trend breakdown:
Customer/Enterprise Automation: 13 startups
AI-powered Platforms: 6 startups
Industry-specific AI (healthcare, fintech, climate, engineering, media, etc.): 13 startups
Security/Compliance/Risk: 5 startups
Generative AI/Models: 6 startups
Other/Unique Use Cases: 10 startups
Trend suggests the largest focuses are on solutions that automate functions for customers and enterprises, plus innovations for specific industries, while maintaining a significant emphasis on AI-powered platforms, generative models, security, and unique new use cases.
Use cases
Here are all the unique use cases represented by the 53 companies in the Gemini Founders Forum cohort:
AI-powered Security Solutions: Agentic security for enterprise applications, predictive cyber threat identification, supply chain software security, deepfake detection.
Healthcare AI: Automated clinical coding, fraud/error reduction in healthcare, AI-based veterinary care, genomics for precision oncology, AI-powered clinical trials, brain health neuro-imaging, conversational AI in healthcare, insurance and data-driven care, personalized medicine research acceleration.
Legal Technology: Regulatory/ethics AI platforms, mass litigation operation automation, AI contract automation.
Customer/Enterprise Automation: B2B workflow automation, AI-based order entry, digital adoption & instant documentation, customer pain point analysis, agentic customer support, sales support & qualification, multi-agent platforms for service operations.
Generative AI/Content Creation: Generative AI models for brand-specific visuals, SDKs for digital human avatars, knowledge warehouse for content structuring, speaker diarization in audio/video, content creation platforms for comics and webtoons.
Education Tech: AI learning assistants linked to school LMS, virtual classroom collaboration platforms.
Fintech: Treasury management automation, open finance data bureau, trade finance with AI, democratized lending, instant access to financial data, estate planning modernization.
Climate/Environmental Solutions: Water risk management via SaaS, climate risk analytics for asset management, automated environmental tracking in supply chains.
Engineering/Construction: AI-powered engineering for power supply design, project risk management, automation of construction takeoffs, vision/AI for farm tractors/robots.
Media and Entertainment: Music rights transactions powered by AI, digital storytelling for comics/manga/webtoons.
Restaurant/SMB Tools: Tools to enhance SMB restaurant efficiency and customer experience automation.
Travel/Logistics: AI insurance and travel care, autonomous outdoor logistics robots.
Messaging/Communication: AI-powered platforms for buyer-seller connections over messaging, WhatsApp-centric engagement automation, browser extensions for context-aware autocomplete/text generation.
Spacetech: Satellites and foundational AI for satellite imagery analysis.
The Takeaway
With 11 out of 53 specifically building agentic AI platform solutions, Google’s Gemini Founders Forum cohort is Agentic AI dominated with wide span of use cases with a good mix of Gen AI plus vertical integration. the trend based on the selection however signals AI development for startups depends on deep specialization, not general-purpose platforms. With cloud interoperability and big tech offering modular agent-building tools, startups must become experts in distinct industry domains and solve tangible, specialized problems. Open protocols mean not everything needs to be built from scratch and collaboration and plug-and-play integrations are key.