Visibility into the AI capabilities of major companies is sorely lacking - with hype around AI often obscuring the reality. We created Evident to increase transparency around how companies are building and developing AI by creating a global standard benchmark: the Evident AI Index. We believe transparency is critical to harness the value of AI for commercial - and societal - gain. By showcasing best practice, we aim to help companies transform faster and safely, minimising the harms of AI and maximising the commercial, economic and societal opportunities.

At the heart of the Evident AI Index is independence: unlike existing surveys and benchmarks, the Index relies solely on publicly available data. This "outside-in" approach is important: claims of adoption and innovation are easily made, but it is hard to get to the substance. The volume of data, and the range of sources available, enables us to build a more complete and rich assessment of corporate AI capability than the narrow survey-based approaches that exist today. And, crucially, it enables us to offer an unbiased and independent profile of a company’s AI maturity, without resting on proprietary surveys that suffer from self-reported biases.

Our Index draws upon millions of data points to assess each company across 143 individual indicators that have been defined with input from more than 50 leading AI and banking experts, as well as more than half of the banks in the Index. Everything we do is driven by a rigorous methodology and adherence to best-in-class principles around managing and leveraging the power of big data.

AI and other emerging technologies have the potential to transform every aspect of our lives. Businesses are racing to deploy AI in everything from agriculture to banking. And yet no one knows exactly what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. The world is running blind. Companies don’t know how their AI ecosystems compare against those of their competitors. Investors can’t clearly see who has the competitive advantage, and regulators struggle to keep up. We use data to change that.

We have built a world-class team of data scientists, analyst and developers, led by our CEO Alexandra Mousavizadeh and Co-founder Annabel Ayles, to create the Evident AI Index. Our investors include the VC fund Venrex, Scott Galloway and a number of angel investors. As we grow Evident, we are committed to building a diverse team.