How the AI development companies in this guide were chosen

This page explains how the list was made, so you can judge it and repeat any part of it. Every page used was opened on 20 October 2026. Where a page could not be opened, it was not used.

The three tests

A firm entered the list only if it passed all three.

1. It builds AI software for other companies. A firm that only sells a product, or only supplies data to AI labs, did not qualify on that alone.
2. A published page names an office in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. The page could be the firm's own, a news report or a directory. A private mailbox counts as an address only with an outside source that places the firm in the Bay Area.
3. Enough facts exist to say who the firm fits. That means at least the firm's own description of its work, on a page that loaded that day.

What was checked, and where

Check	Where it was checked
Office address	The firm's contact, about or careers page; news reports that describe where the firm is based
Size	The firm's own site; news reports; Forbes's company pages; filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
Funding and ownership	TechCrunch, Crunchbase News and SiliconANGLE; company filings and press releases
Partner listings	Anthropic's partner directory [1]; Stripe's partner directory; AWS's partner awards
Clients	The firm's own site, then a search for a client's own statement or a news report naming the firm
Price	The firm's own site, for any published rate or package
Wages	The US Bureau of Labor Statistics data service

Anthropic's directory held 321 entries on 20 October 2026, and the searches for Reveneau and Fluxon covered all of them [1].

Three kinds of source, written three ways

The firm's own pages. A website, a press release or a firm's own filing shows what the firm says about itself. On the page, these facts carry words such as "by its own account", "the firm says" or "its homepage shows". Client names from a firm's own site are written as what the site shows.

Independent sources. A news report, a government data set or a client's own statement comes from someone with no stake in the claim. These facts name the source in the sentence: "TechCrunch reported", "Crunchbase News describes", "the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts". One example of a client's own statement is Airbyte's blog, which names the Fractional AI team, now Ode with Anthropic, as its partner on an AI assistant [2].

Directories run by platform companies. Anthropic, Stripe and AWS each run partner programmes. The platform sets the tier, so the tier is the platform's statement. The text beside each name is written by the partner, so that text is the firm's own. When the platform also owns the firm, as Anthropic co-owns Ode with Anthropic, the listing comes from an owner, and the page says so.

Source type	Example in this guide	How it is written
The firm's own pages	Provectus's 400+ builders and consultants	"By its own account"
Independent	TechCrunch on Tribe AI's more than 500 contractors [3]	"TechCrunch reported"
Directory	Loka's Preferred tier in Anthropic's directory	"Anthropic's directory lists"
A company filing	Grid Dynamics's 4,961 employees [8]	"Its results release reports"

A company filing with a regulator is the firm's own document. It is listed separately because the firm filed it with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cautions applied across every page

• No firm publishes a price. Every page that mentions cost says so.
• Turing's San Francisco address is a private mailbox, 548 Market Street, PMB 18282, and TechCrunch called Turing Palo Alto-based in March 2025 [4]. Both facts appear together.
• TechCrunch called Tribe AI Brooklyn-based in July 2024 [3]. Its San Francisco office comes only from its own site, and the pages say so.
• Anthropic co-owns Ode with Anthropic. Its directory listing is always described as coming from an owner.
• No client that Fluxon names has an outside confirmation. Searches for a news report, a client's website, a conference talk or a public code repository naming Fluxon as the builder found none, so Fluxon's clients appear only as what its own site shows.

Facts left out on purpose

Some figures appear on a firm's own site or in a news report that only repeats the firm's words. When the firm was the only source, and the figure would read as a measure of quality, it was left out.

Firm	Figure left out	Why
Loka	Its own figure for how many trial projects became live systems, and its own review score	Only Loka states them
Distyl AI	Its own revenue growth and end-user count	Crunchbase News reported them as Distyl's own figures [5]
Tribe AI	Its revenue run rate, meaning yearly revenue at its current pace	TechCrunch reported it as the co-founder's statement in 2024 [3]
Turing	Its revenue run rate	TechCrunch gave it as an approximate figure [4]
Fluxon	Most headcount figures	Earlier research found eight figures that conflict; only Forbes's 200 employees, as of March 2026, is used [6]

Fluxon's Great Place To Work profile, updated in February 2022, gives 13 US-based employees [7]. That figure is older and covers US staff only, so the pages use Forbes's figure and date it.

Candidates left out

Candidate	Reason
Invisible Technologies	The only Bay Area address found was a private mailbox number in its own site data, with no office confirmed
Mechanical Orchard	It lists a San Francisco address, but it leads with its own product for rewriting old mainframe systems, and one search found no independent source
Artium	No office address found on its site
Percepta	Its site data lists New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts only
frog	Not researched in the time available, so not confirmed

Fractional AI is in the list under its new name, Ode with Anthropic.

What could not be confirmed

Some pages refused automated reading or required a paid subscription. None of them is used.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics wage tables in web page form refused the request, so the same figures were read from the BLS data service instead.
• Gartner press releases refused the request and are not used.
• A San Francisco Business Times article on Distyl's headquarters refused the request and is not used.
• The World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers 2025 list refused the request and is not used.
• Wall Street Journal and The Information articles on Distyl require a paid subscription and are not used. SiliconANGLE's report citing The Information is used, and the page names both.
• A Business Wire release on Ode refused the request, so TechCrunch's report is used instead.
• No founding year was found for Ode, Slalom or Turing on the pages opened, so none is given.
• Anthropic's directory pages did not state what a firm must do to reach any of its tiers.

The order of the list

Reveneau is listed first and Fluxon second. The other firms that list AI work among their main services follow, then the larger firms and the design agency. The guide gives no scores and no star ratings, and the entries do not compare firms with each other on speed, price or quality.

Reveneau's entry gives its present practice only, in its own words: AI writes 100 percent of its code; every change has to pass a large eval suite written from the client's specification before release; a grading model called Jev scores that suite, and Reveneau says Jev makes it run ten times faster than its previous grader did; Reveneau uses AI in place of hiring more engineers and puts that saving into clients' prices; it takes responsibility for the whole project through production and after release; and its offices are at 435 Utah Street, San Francisco, and Floor 33, 909 Mainland Street, Vancouver. Anthropic's directory did not list Reveneau on 20 October 2026. Its AI development service and contact page have the rest.

How to repeat a check yourself

1. Open the firm's own contact page and note the address. Look for PMB or a mail service suite.
2. Search a news site for the firm's name and the word "based" to see where reporters place it.
3. Search Anthropic's directory for the firm's name, and try other spellings, such as TribeAI.
4. For any client the firm names, look for the client's own blog, press release or public talk that names the firm.
5. For any figure about the firm's work, ask whether anyone outside the firm measured it.

NIST's AI Risk Management Framework, item GOVERN 6.1, asks organizations to have policies for AI risks that come from third parties [9]. These five steps are a small part of such a review, and the questions to ask an AI development company page covers the rest. The full list shows the result.

When the list changes

Every fact here is dated 20 October 2026. Offices can move, firms can be bought, and directory listings can change. Ode with Anthropic was Fractional AI until the Anthropic joint venture bought it, which TechCrunch reported in July 2026. When a fact on these pages changes, the page date changes with it.