How many AI revenue claims can be verified?
Of 646 AI businesses on Aiolum, 192 have a headline number that a company, a filing or a payment processor disclosed or verified, 226 rest on a claim or one report, and 216 have no revenue figure.Counted from 646 stories ·
Every story on Aiolum has one headline number, and that number carries an evidence grade. The grade says who stands behind the number, not how large it is.
| Grade | What it means | Stories | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor | 192 | 30% |
| B | Confirmed by two or more independent reports | 12 | 2% |
| C | The founder's own figures, not verified by anyone else | 69 | 11% |
| D | Reported, not verified | 157 | 24% |
| E | No revenue figure was checked | 216 | 33% |
How to read this table: grade A and B numbers were disclosed, verified or confirmed by someone other than the founder. Grade C and D numbers were not. Grade E stories have no revenue number at all.
So 204 of 646 headline numbers (32%) are backed by a party other than the founder. Inside the stories, 1,218 of 9,772 single facts carry grade A.
What happens when a famous number does not verify?
1 story is marked as cautionary: the number that made the business known did not hold up against the sources. These stories stay on the site with the claim and the evidence side by side. See the cautionary stories and the corrections page.
Why are so many stories grade A?
The share of grade A is high because of where Aiolum looks, not because founders are usually exact. Many grade A numbers come from revenue directories that read the figure from the founder's payment processor. A business with no such profile and no press coverage reaches the record less often.
Read these numbers as a description of this record, not of all AI businesses. Aiolum lists businesses that it found in public sources and could describe; a business that failed quietly, or never published a number, is not here. Nothing on this page is investment advice.
More answers from the same record: How much revenue do one-person and small-team AI businesses make? · Which small AI startups were sold, and what is known about the price?