Social Life Magazine is building its first Hamptons 40 Under 40 list. Before we name anyone, we went looking for the New Yorkers turning artificial intelligence into actual money. Consider this the prequel.

At a glance  
The story Five New York AI companies with real revenue, and the traditional firms already profiting from AI
Combined recurring revenue (disclosed or estimated) More than $600 million a year (Clay, EliseAI, Rogo, Runway)
Combined latest valuations About $16 billion (Clay $7.1B, EliseAI $4B, Runway $5.3B)
Profits disclosed None of the five, as of October 2026
New York venture funding, Q2 2026 $8.88 billion, with AI companies taking about half
What comes next Social Life Magazine’s Hamptons 40 Under 40

Five years of nothing, then $100 million

In early 2022, a New York software company called Clay had spent five years building and was bringing in close to zero revenue. Its co-founder, Kareem Amin, had already done the respectable things: engineering at McGill, a job at Microsoft, a startup sold to Sailthru, a stint running product at The Wall Street Journal. None of it predicted what came next. By late 2025, Clay crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In September 2026, investors valued it at $7.1 billion.

That is the New York version of the AI story, and it is not the one you hear at dinner. The dinner version is about California: the labs, the chips, the trillion-dollar data centers, the founders in Patagonia vests explaining the end of work. Silicon Valley is building the machines. Fine. Somebody still has to sell what the machines make, to landlords, bankers, studios, advertisers and anyone with a payroll. That somebody, increasingly, lives in New York.

The thesis of this series is simple. New York’s AI winners are not the people raising the most money. They are the people collecting it. They sit next to the industries that already pay the city’s rent: real estate, Wall Street, media, fashion, marketing, and sell AI to customers who were writing checks long before anyone said “large language model.”

Social Life Magazine is about to publish its first Hamptons 40 Under 40, a list of the people who will define the next decade of East End money and influence. We started this reporting to find out who belongs on it. What we found was a pattern worth explaining first, and a question that matters to every business owner reading this: is AI making real money in New York, or just raising it?

Who are New York’s AI founders making real money?

Five New York companies show the pattern most clearly: Clay, EliseAI, Rogo, Runway and Bluefish. Four have disclosed or been credibly estimated at tens to hundreds of millions in recurring revenue, and each one sells into a different industry the city already dominates. Several of their founders are young enough for our list; we profile them in The Under-40s Already Running New York’s AI Economy.

Clay: the sales machine

Clay sells software that helps sales and marketing teams find customers and reach them with something better than spam. Its founders, Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan and Varun Anand, coined a job title along the way, the “GTM engineer,” short for go-to-market. Amin was born in Egypt and grew up in Saudi Arabia before moving to Canada, according to profiles of him, and today lives in Brooklyn. Research firm Sacra estimated Clay’s recurring revenue at about $150 million by May 2026. The company has repeatedly let employees cash out shares through tender offers instead of rushing to sell or go public, which tells you something about who is getting rich here: the staff, not just the founders.

EliseAI: the landlord’s new employee

EliseAI answers renters’ questions, books apartment tours, chases late rent and handles maintenance requests, around the clock. About one in six US apartments now runs leasing conversations through it. Co-founder and CEO Minna Song started the company in 2017 with her husband, Tony Stoyanov, whom she met during an exchange year at the University of Cambridge. EliseAI passed $200 million in annual recurring revenue in June 2026, after doubling revenue five years in a row, and raised $350 million in September at a $4 billion valuation. In a city where real estate is a religion, a company that makes buildings run cheaper is preaching to the choir.

Rogo: the analyst who never sleeps

Rogo builds AI for the junior bankers who used to pull all-nighters building pitch books. CEO Gabriel Stengel left Lazard to start it with fellow Princeton graduate John Willett, a former J.P. Morgan and Barclays banker, and Tumas Rackaitis. The founders were named to Forbes’ 2026 30 Under 30 list in finance. Rogo doesn’t publish its revenue. It told Axios in July that recurring revenue grew more than 50% in a single quarter, and Sacra estimates it at about $53 million. Forbes reported roughly $2 million in 2024 revenue and more than $15 million in 2025. On Wall Street, that’s a career’s worth of growth in two years.

Runway: Hollywood’s New York problem

Runway makes AI video tools that have been used in productions including the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once. Co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, born in 1989 in Chile, studied economics and design in Santiago before coming to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he and classmates Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz founded the company in 2018. Runway passed $200 million in annual recurring revenue in September 2026, doubling in about five months, and expects to reach $350 million by year’s end, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. NYU honored Valenzuela at its 2026 Tisch Gala at Cipriani South Street. An art-school project that now competes with Google and OpenAI is about as New York as a story gets.

Bluefish: what the robots say about your brand

Bluefish helps big brands track and shape how ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI assistants describe them when shoppers ask what to buy. Its customers include Adidas, American Express, Hearst and Ulta Beauty. CEO Alex Sherman previously co-founded PromoteIQ, which Microsoft bought in 2019, and started Bluefish in 2024 with Jing Feng and Andrei Dunca. It has raised $68 million but has not disclosed revenue. For luxury brands, its premise is a little alarming: your customer’s next purchase may be decided by what a chatbot thinks of you. We explain how that works in What ChatGPT Says About Your Brand Could Cost You the Sale.

The New York AI Revenue Tracker

This table is the scoreboard for the series. We update it monthly as companies disclose new numbers. Figures marked “estimate” come from research firms, not the company.

Company Founders Industry Latest recurring revenue As of Valuation or funding
EliseAI Minna Song, Tony Stoyanov Real estate $200M+ (company) June 2026 $4B valuation
Runway Cristóbal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz Film and advertising $200M+ (company) Sept 2026 $5.3B valuation
Clay Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, Varun Anand Sales and marketing ~$150M (Sacra estimate) May 2026 $7.1B valuation
Rogo Gabriel Stengel, John Willett, Tumas Rackaitis Wall Street ~$53M (Sacra estimate) Aug 2026 ~$340M raised
Bluefish Alex Sherman, Jing Feng, Andrei Dunca Brand marketing Not disclosed N/A $68M raised

Last updated October 31, 2026. Companies that want to update their numbers can reach Social Life Magazine directly.

Why is the AI money coming to New York?

Because the customers are already here. New York startups raised $8.88 billion in the second quarter of 2026, the strongest second quarter in the city’s venture history, according to AlleyWatch. AI companies took about half of it. The New York State Comptroller counts more than 2,000 AI startups and 35 unicorns in the New York metro area, which is now the country’s second-largest venture market after Silicon Valley.

The logic is simple once you see it. An AI company selling to banks wants to be near banks. One selling to landlords wants to be near the biggest rental market in America. One selling to brands wants to be a cab ride from Madison Avenue. We follow the money in Why the Smart Money Is Leaving Palo Alto for Park Avenue.

Is old New York making money from AI too?

Yes, and the biggest proof comes from the most traditional address in American finance. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said the bank spends about $2 billion a year on AI and is already saving about the same amount. On a July earnings call he added that AI had cut headcount 30% to 40% in some units.

The rest of Park Avenue is keeping score, too:

Company What AI did, by the company’s own account The fine print
Citigroup Freed about 100,000 developer hours a week through automated code reviews Hours, not dollars
Morgan Stanley Saves advisors about 30 minutes per client meeting; used by about 98% of advisor teams No revenue lift disclosed
Moody’s Customers using its AI tools renew at 97% and grow about twice as fast Measures sales, not internal savings
Omnicom Adjusted margin up 2 points to 18.2% in Q3 2026 Mostly credited to its Interpublic merger
Estée Lauder Companies AI doubled the number of product launches it can do in a year, per its supply-chain chief An output measure, not profit
Mount Sinai AI shift pricing cut contract labor costs 7% in 30 days Figure comes from the vendor

Here is the twist, and Dimon said it himself

When every bank buys the same tools, the savings tend to flow to customers instead of shareholders. AI is a cost of staying in the game, not a guaranteed edge. That is exactly why the interesting winners are smaller. A $20 billion technology budget buys efficiency. A five-person firm with the same tools can buy something better: the ability to compete for clients it could never have served before.

That’s the part of the story the public numbers can’t tell yet. A New York Fed study published this month found that 46% of small employers use AI, but only 31% say it has raised their sales. The owners in that 31% are the people we most want to meet, and we start meeting them in The Old-School New York Business That Quietly Got Rich on AI.

Are these AI companies actually profitable?

Not that anyone has disclosed. None of the five startups has published a profit, and revenue growth is not the same thing as earnings. Recurring revenue is a run rate: what a company would collect over twelve months if every current customer kept paying. It is a promise with a strong track record, not cash in the bank.

That distinction matters less than skeptics think, for one reason. These companies are selling to customers who already pay for the work AI replaces. A landlord paying leasing agents, a bank paying analysts, a studio paying a visual-effects house: each has a budget line that already exists. The hard part of a business is finding someone willing to pay. These founders found them. Profit is usually what happens next, once growth stops eating the margin. We run the numbers in Growth Is Easy. Here’s Who’s Actually Making a Profit.

Can five people beat fifty?

This is the question that turns an AI story into a New York story. The city runs on professional services: law firms, ad agencies, accounting practices, wealth managers, PR shops. For a century, the way to win bigger clients was to hire more people. AI breaks that formula. A small firm that uses these tools well can produce work at the speed and polish of a much larger one, without the rent on a full floor in Midtown. The full case is in Five People and a Laptop Just Beat Your 50-Person Firm.

That is also why we expect the most interesting names on our list to come from places no venture capitalist is watching. The founder who rebuilt a family accounting firm around AI. An agency owner who cut her team in half and doubled her client list. Or the broker who answers every inquiry in four minutes at midnight. [INTERVIEW NEEDED: one New York owner with before-and-after numbers to anchor this section.]

The prequel to Social Life’s Hamptons 40 Under 40

Why does a Hamptons magazine care? Because money always comes east. The Wall Street fortunes of the 1980s bought Southampton. Hedge fund fortunes of the 2000s bought Sagaponack. The question for the next decade is who pays for the next generation of houses on Meadow Lane, the cabanas at Polo Hamptons and the tables at the best Saturday-night dinners. Our bet is that a meaningful share of them will be people who learned to make AI pay.

Some of the founders in this story may be on our first Hamptons 40 Under 40 list. Some may already be past forty and belong in a different conversation. Most of the eventual honorees, we suspect, haven’t been written about yet. If you know a New Yorker under forty who is making real money with AI, or you are one, nominate them here. We want to hear the story and see the numbers.

In early 2022, Clay was a company with five years of work and almost nothing to show for it. Somewhere in New York right now, there is another one. We’d like to find it before everyone else does.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most successful AI companies in New York?

By disclosed revenue, EliseAI and Runway lead, each passing $200 million in annual recurring revenue in 2026. Clay is estimated at about $150 million and carries the highest valuation, $7.1 billion. Rogo, built for Wall Street, is estimated at about $53 million.

Why are AI companies choosing New York over Silicon Valley?

New York’s AI companies sit next to their customers. EliseAI sells to landlords, Rogo to banks, Runway to studios and ad agencies, and Bluefish to consumer brands. Those industries are concentrated in New York, which shortens sales cycles and gives founders expertise California can’t easily match.

Are New York AI startups profitable?

None of the five companies in this story has disclosed a profit as of October 2026. They report recurring revenue, a measure of what current customers pay over a year. Strong recurring revenue from existing budget lines usually comes before profitability, but it is not the same thing.

How are traditional New York companies using AI to make money?

JPMorgan Chase says it saves about as much from AI as it spends, roughly $2 billion a year. Citigroup reports freeing about 100,000 developer hours a week, and Morgan Stanley says advisors save about 30 minutes per client meeting.

What is Social Life Magazine’s Hamptons 40 Under 40?

It is Social Life Magazine’s upcoming list of people under 40 who are shaping the next decade of Hamptons money and influence. This article is its prequel, a look at the New Yorkers turning AI into real revenue. Nominations are open to founders and owners with verifiable results.

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