10 Under-the-Radar AI Companies to Watch in 2026

When people discuss artificial intelligence in 2026, the same handful of companies tend to dominate the conversation. Google. OpenAI. Nvidia. Microsoft. Amazon.

However, there are some burgeoning, under-the-radar vendors focused on making AI systems easier to deploy, manage, and leverage within organizations.

This list highlights 10 hidden gems in the AI industry worth watching in 2026. While none of these companies are yet household names, each is gaining traction in healthcare, data governance, and enterprise operations.

1. Baseten

Baseten is a San Francisco-based ML infrastructure company focusing on high-performance model inference at scale. Baseten’s platform enables enterprises to deploy open-source, custom, and fine-tuned AI models on infrastructure optimized for high-performance inference. 

Using advanced hardware from Google Cloud and Nvidia, the platform recently achieved significant performance gains, including a 225% reduction in costs for high-volume processing and a 25% increase in speed for speed-sensitive tasks. Baseten makes it practical for companies to deploy powerful AI models in real-world applications such as voice assistants, search tools, and automated workflows without breaking the bank on computing costs.

2. Modal Labs Inc. 

Modal Labs Inc. is a developer-focused infrastructure company that simplifies building and deploying applications for data, AI, and machine learning. The company provides a serverless platform designed to handle the technical complexity by managing everything from custom files to container runtimes, allowing developers to scale thousands of CPUs or GPUs with just a few lines of code. 

Modal serves a wide range of use cases, including generative AI inference, LLM fine-tuning, computational biotech, and media processing. By prioritizing developer experience, Modal removes the infrastructure barrier, enabling companies to ship AI and data applications faster without requiring deep infrastructure expertise. 

3. Anyscale

Anyscale is the company behind Ray, an open-source framework for distributed computing that has become essential to AI development companies like OpenAI, Uber, and Spotify. The company commercializes Ray through a fully managed platform built on Ray that helps developers scale ML applications from their laptop to production without needing distributed system expertise.

The company recently announced its partnership with Microsoft to bring Anyscale to Azure as a first-party service, making it easier for enterprises to build and deploy AI applications within Azure’s secure infrastructure.

4. Abridge

Abridge is an AI company transforming healthcare conversations into actionable insights for clinicians and patients.

The platform listens to provider-patient conversations and automatically generates clinical documentation while integrating Epic EHR, saving providers an average of two hours per day. In 2025, Abridge expanded beyond transcription to include revenue cycle intelligence, checking, and validating billing codes in real time to reduce administrative costs to healthcare providers. 

Abridge recently launched Abridge for Nurses, recognized by TIME as one of the best inventions of the year, which captures nursing documentation automatically, reducing administrative burden so nurses can focus on patient care. 

5. Cresta

Cresta is an AI company that aims to transform how contact centers operate by combining humans and AI to enhance customer conversations. The company helps enterprises like Carmax, Hilton, and Cox Communications to save time and cost while delivering consistent, compliant customer experiences that drive revenue growth. 

Cresta recently launched the Agent Operations Centers, a centralized command hub that gives supervisors real-time visibility into both human- and AI-led conversations using intervention tools. The platform introduces a new role for AI supervisors, enabling human experts to guide AI agent conversations to resolve issues quickly and improve customer experiences.

6. eGain

eGain is a publicly traded software company that helps businesses simplify customer service and support across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and social media. The company provides cloud-based solutions that combine knowledge management with AI capabilities, enabling faster, more consistent responses to customer inquiries rather than relying on automated responses.

eGain serves industries such as finance, retail, and telecom through products like AI Agent, AI Knowledge Hub, and Conversation Hub, enabling enterprises to minimize support costs while enhancing customer satisfaction. The company offers SaaS subscriptions, professional services, and support to help businesses deliver consistent, personalized customer experiences. 

7. Immuta

Immuta is a data security company that helps organizations safely share sensitive data at scale.

The platform identifies sensitive data, enforces security policies, and monitors data usage across your infrastructure. Immuta enables data teams to streamline operations and simplify governance by automating access controls and policy enforcement, so teams don’t have to manually restrict data or create ad hoc security measures. 

Backed by investors from leading data companies such as Databricks and Snowflake, Immuta helps organizations get more value from their data while maintaining compliance and security.

8. HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer is a Gartner-recognized AI security company that protects agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications throughout the entire lifecycle. Its platform protects AI applications from monitoring the supply chain to conducting automated security testing to identify potential vulnerabilities. 

Founded by cybersecurity and machine learning veterans, HiddenLayer uses patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research to help companies manage risks, ensure compliance, and adopt AI safely at scale. HiddenLayer is backed by strategic investors, including Microsoft’s Venture Fund, IBM Ventures, and Capital One Ventures. 

9. Innodata

Innodata is a global data engineering company that has quietly built deep expertise over 35 years. The company helps solve critical data engineering challenges and has become a trusted partner for seven of the largest tech companies, improving their AI systems. 

Innodata provides specialized data services, including annotation, transformation, curation, and intelligent automation, designed for generative and traditional AI applications. The company offers services for securely labeling complex and sensitive data for model training, converting unstructured information into structured formats, and maintaining accurate databases.

10. PagerDuty

PagerDuty is a digital operations management company trusted by 30,000 organizations and 68% of the Fortune 100 to detect and respond to critical issues. The company’s platform orchestrates incident response across teams, including developers and engineers, security, and customer success. 

PagerDuty offers services such as incident management, AIOps for alert optimization, automation tools, and AI agents to help businesses manage critical work and operate more efficiently. The platform integrates seamlessly with over 700 popular tools, including Slack, AWS, and Microsoft Teams, making it easy for teams to integrate PagerDuty into their existing workflows.

For more insight into how AI is expected to shape enterprise IT in the year ahead, see eWeek’s AI predictions for 2026. 
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