Unlocking the successful business models: cluster analysis of the artificial intelligence start-ups

AI start-ups are innovation pioneers around the world and have the potential to enable BMs that were unthinkable a few years ago leading to value creation through the data-driven learning. Researchers have done extensive investigation in the AI applications, but there is a lack of research on how AI start-ups create value in AI commercial deployments. We make a selection of relevant AI start-ups worldwide in the crunch base pro database, and after a careful process of elimination we select a group of 100. Cluster analysis is done with the use of NVivo software. The results of this research not only provide valuable information to companies in their investment decisions and action to develop and deploy AI applications, but also provide a guideline to entrepreneurs in the effective developing of their value propositions. The results also make several contributions to the network effect theory and to the dynamic capabilities theory.