From 20x to 225x: The wide range of AI revenue multiples
Review of 21 leading AI Startups incl: OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Harvey and more
👋 Hi, it’s Palle Broe and welcome to Rule of Thumb, my weekly newsletter exploring the startup and tech world providing tangible advice and insights from the worlds best operators and startups
I had a look into the revenue multiples of 21 leading AI startups. In short: Revenue multiples remain sky-high for the most hyped late stage AI startups.
At the top of the range we have:
Sierra AI which raised $175M at a $4.5B valuation (225x revenue multiple).
Perplexity which raised $500M at a $9B valuation (180x revenue multiple).
Hugging Face which raised $235M at a $4.5B valuation (90x revenue multiple).
At the bottom of the range we have:
EvenUp at 20x revenue multiple.
Synthesia at 23x revenue multiple.
Anysphere (Cursor) at 26x revenue multiple.
On average the revenue multiple for the 21 AI startups is around 47x which is in stark contrast to the average public SaaS company valued at roughly 7x their revenue today.
Data is pulled from public available sources - treat it as directionally correct.
AI Startups: Revenue Multiples
There are 3 points worth noting (although only based on the below companies so take with a grain of salt) .
VCs are still fighting to get into the best AI deals. The competition leads to very high revenue multiples. Valuations that cant be justified with todays revenue but the AI upside which is expected to play out over the next 5 - 10 years.
B2B and B2B & B2C focused startups seems to attract higher revenue multiples than B2C startups. This could potentially be due to the higher quality of revenue (less churn, higher acv, longer contracts etc.) that B2B companies can have.
Revenue multiples lower for startups that raised in 2025 vs 2024. It seems like the companies that were valued in 2025 does have a slightly lower revenue multiple than those valued in 2024. We might potentially be seeing a ceiling on valuations and revenue multiples.
Mag 7: Revenue Multiples
Nvidia stands out from the other Mag 7 companies. Due to their astonishing growth rates and positive outlook they are currently trading at a 27x multiple while the rest are trading in a range from 3.5x (Amazon) to 11.3x (Microsoft).
AI Startups: Revenue
As a point of reference I have attached the revenue from the above startups
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HF has 220 team members (not 440)