What this is. An original dataset, built from New York State's register of active corporations as updated on 30 September 2026, and published with the rules that produced it. It counts entities whose name contains AI. It is not a count of AI companies, and the difference is the subject of the piece. It follows the same rule as the UK study, so the two can be read side by side.
Using these figures. Free to cite with a link to this page. The method and the caveats are all below, because a number without them is not worth quoting.
Want the data itself? The derived dataset and the scripts that produce it are yours on request. Email contact@krawl.digital and they will be sent over.
How far AI naming has spread
This year, 466 of 192,887 New York companies formed that year carry AI in the name.
The change in naming between 2022 and this year is stark: one in 4,630 in 2022, against one in 414 this year.
The numbers behind this chart
| Period | Value (%) |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 0.011 |
| '18 | 0.021 |
| '19 | 0.028 |
| 2020 | 0.024 |
| '21 | 0.019 |
| '22 | 0.022 |
| '23 | 0.075 |
| '24 | 0.108 |
| 2025 | 0.194 |
| 2026* | 0.242 |
What was actually measured
The frame for every claim here is active entities on New York State's register on 30 September 2026 with AI in their name, selected under one rule: AI as a separate word written without full stops and not after an apostrophe, or one of eight explicit phrases such as artificial intelligence or machine learning.
Within that frame, 2,580 of 4,289,824 active entities have AI in the name, and the count includes entities formed in New York and those registered from elsewhere.
Most AI-named entities on the register were formed in New York itself: 1,735 of 2,580 AI-named entities.
The timeline, the naming patterns and the address cohorts use only those New York-formed companies, because they share a formation process and can be compared across years.
How the names changed
The oldest active match is AI Management Services Inc., on the register since 1960, but the newer pattern is different: Fettled AI, Switchflow AI and Clearwatch AI put AI after another word, and that trailing style now dominates.
Across cohorts, the balance has flipped: names starting with AI fell from 62.0% of those formed in 2018 or earlier to 20.0% of those formed since 2025.
Since 2025, 73.2% of AI-named New York companies put AI after another word.
The trade words that once signalled a line of work have nearly vanished from the newest cohort: names carrying a trade word fell from 19.8% of those formed in 2018 or earlier to 2.0% of those formed since 2025.
Technology words are filling the gap: 18.1% of those formed since 2025 carry a technology word or a .ai domain.
The numbers behind this chart
| Row | Formed 2018 or earlier (%) | Formed since january 2025 (%) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starts with AI | 62 | 20 | -42 |
| AI after another word | 35.8 | 73.2 | +37.4 |
| Written as .ai | 2.1 | 6.8 | +4.7 |
| Carries a trade word | 19.8 | 2 | -17.8 |
Why names shifted towards AI-last
Forming a New York LLC is cheap and online, and the name is the one claim a company can make before it has a product or a site.
Putting AI at the end of the name makes it read like a product category or a technology layer, the way "Labs" or "Tech" once did, rather than the whole identity.
Where AI-named companies receive legal papers
New York companies must list an address for service, and for AI-named firms formed since 2025 that address is more often a registered agent than for their peers: 28.0% of AI-named companies formed since 2025, against 15.3% of all New York companies formed since 2025.
Across those same recent cohorts, AI-named companies are 1.8 times as likely as other new New York companies to use an agent address.
The same gap also appears in the oldest cohort: 12.3% of AI-named companies formed in 2018 or earlier, against 5.7% of all New York companies formed then.
One building stands out as the single largest host of AI-named entities: 418 Broadway, Albany is the address for 316 of 2,580 AI-named entities.
Tens of thousands of other entities also use that building, many through Northwest Registered Agent, Registered Agents Inc. and Corporation Service Company.
Out-of-state AI-named entities form a separate population, and about half of them use an agent address for service in New York: 466 of 845 AI-named entities formed outside New York.
The numbers behind this chart
| Row | All new york companies (%) | Ai-named (%) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 or earlier | 5.7 | 12.3 | +6.6 |
| 2019 to 2022 | 10 | 20.4 | +10.4 |
| 2023 to 2024 | 11.3 | 19.3 | +8 |
| 2025 to 2026 | 15.3 | 28 | +12.7 |
What cleaning agent addresses changed
Once agent addresses are removed, 1,330 of 1,735 of the New York-formed AI-named companies can still be placed in a county.
In Albany County, 228 of 271 of its AI-named companies use an agent address. It would have ranked first in the state before cleaning, at 3.7 times the rate of the next county, and second after.
The numbers behind this chart
| Row | As registered | Agent addresses removed | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albany | 84.7 | 13.44 | -71.26 |
| Manhattan | 23 | 19.21 | -3.79 |
| Nassau | 11.92 | 10.56 | -1.36 |
| Rockland | 11.2 | 10.05 | -1.15 |
| Brooklyn | 8.75 | 8.02 | -0.73 |
| Queens | 7.81 | 7.21 | -0.6 |
Where AI-named companies actually cluster
After removing agent addresses and placing companies by county, the five boroughs together hold a majority of the AI-named New York-formed cohort: 748 of 1,330 companies placed in a county.
On a per-resident basis, Manhattan stands out among the boroughs: 19.2 per 100,000 residents.
No full county league table is published, because the cleaned counts are small and volatile: 45 of 62 New York counties hold fewer than ten AI-named companies each.
What the register cannot tell you
The counts by year are survivors, not formations, because dissolved entities leave the register: 17 remain from 2017, and the same depletion affects every earlier cohort.
An address for service is where legal papers go, not where people work, and the names alone cannot say whether an AI-named entity is an AI business at all; OpenAI OpCo, Anthropic PBC, Hugging Face and Hebbia show how much the rule leaves out.
The numbers behind this chart
| Row | Value |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 17 |
| '18 | 35 |
| '19 | 48 |
| 2020 | 46 |
| '21 | 43 |
| '22 | 49 |
| '23 | 183 |
| '24 | 242 |
| 2025 | 471 |
| 2026* | 466 |
Methodology
The source is New York's register of active corporations on data.ny.gov, as updated on 30 September 2026, queried through its public API.
An entity counts if its name contains AI as a separate word, without full stops and not after an apostrophe, or one of eight phrases such as artificial intelligence or machine learning. It is the UK study's rule, plus the apostrophe exclusion.
Timeline, cohort and county figures cover companies formed in New York only. For a company formed elsewhere, the filing date is when it registered in New York.
An agent address is an address for service used by 500 or more active entities. New York records no industry, so names were checked against short lists of technology words (tech, labs, software, data) and trade words (pizza, nails, realty, roofing). Populations are Census Bureau county estimates for July 2024.
The derived dataset, the full word lists and the scripts are available on request from contact@krawl.digital.
Source
New York Department of State, Active Corporations: Beginning 1800, via data.ny.gov, and US Census Bureau county population estimates. Register as updated 30 September 2026.