Kumo Honored on Inc. Magazine's Best in Business List for 2025

Kumo was selected for the Best Startups category, recognizing their breakthrough accomplishments advancing enterprise AI.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Kumo, a leader in predictive AI, announced today that it has been named on Inc. Magazine's annual Best in Business list, which celebrates companies pushing meaningful advances in business and innovation. Kumo was recognized in the Best Startups category for a year of major milestones, including the launch of its novel Relational Foundation Model, KumoRFM. Kumo joins a select list of companies vetted for their impact and proudly joins past honorees such as Gong, Notion, and Salesforce.

One of Kumo's most significant milestones in 2025 was launching the first-ever Relational Foundation Model, known as KumoRFM. Much like how large language models reshaped unstructured text, Kumo set out to bring structured data, the core and differentiating asset of every company, into the age of AI.

With KumoRFM, users are able to take their relational data that was simply sitting in their systems and turn it into something that moves the needle for their business. The model brings foundation-model capabilities to relational databases for the first time, allowing teams to connect their data warehouse and instantly predict outcomes like customer churn, fraud, or product recommendations. It requires no task-specific training, replaces months of engineering with results in seconds, and delivers up to 20× faster time to value with significantly higher accuracy than traditional approaches.

"We are bringing businesses a new generation of predictive capabilities that were previously out of reach for most," says Dr. Vanja Josifovski, CEO and Founder of Kumo. "It is an honor to be included as one of the Best Startups on Inc. Magazine's Best in Business list, and we're looking forward to an even bigger year ahead."

"Each Best in Business honoree achieved a breakthrough moment this year. Some unveiled groundbreaking innovations, while others launched savvy marketing campaigns or strategically implemented AI in their companies," says Bonny Ghosh, editorial director at Inc. "No matter what their business win looked like, their projects and initiatives had a sizable impact on their company and even on their industry at large, making them worthy of this honor."

Kumo serves organizations of all sizes, from small teams to major enterprises. Kumo's customers include DoorDash, Reddit, Sainsbury's, and several Fortune 500 companies, and it maintains close partnerships with Snowflake and Databricks. With KumoRFM, anyone from a global enterprise to a team just getting started can connect their data and generate predictions in seconds.

Kumo, launched in 2021 and backed with $37 million, was co-founded by Dr. Vanja Josifovski, Dr. Jure Leskovec, and Dr. Hema Raghavan, leaders who have spent their entire careers unlocking the value of relational data through AI. Each held senior roles at LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Airbnb, shaping the AI systems behind some of today's most widely used products. Together, the founders have driven influential research and products used by tens of millions daily, and they bring that same depth of experience and ambition to Kumo.

For more information or to see the complete list, please visit inc.com/best-in-business.

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About Kumo

Kumo gives companies the ability to extract real value from their business data — transactions, customers, inventory — that sits in the data warehouse but is often constrained by outdated AI techniques and complex feature engineering. Kumo's platform uses Relational Graph Transformers to work directly on relational data, enabling teams to train accurate predictive and embedding models up to 20x faster with no feature engineering. Teams can also use the Kumo Foundational Model for instant predictions and real-time decisioning. Kumo was founded by three PhDs who held executive leadership and academic roles at Pinterest, Airbnb, LinkedIn, and Stanford. The company has raised $37 million and is backed by Sequoia Capital. Kumo makes relational data directly usable for high-quality predictive and generative AI, helping businesses of all sizes apply advanced AI more easily. To learn more, visit kumo.ai. 

About Inc.

Inc. is the leading media brand and playbook for the entrepreneurs and business leaders shaping our future. Through its journalism, Inc. aims to inform, educate, and elevate the profile of its community: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters who are creating the future of business. Inc. is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with fellow leading business publication Fast Company. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

SOURCE Kumo.AI