Venture capitalists are the startup experts, the ones who have their finger on the pulse of which fledgling companies will boom and which will bust. As part of Business Insider Prime's comprehensive coverage of the startups that will strike gold in 2019, we asked VCs to name the startups they think are going to be hot this year. They told us about companies they currently have in their portfolios, as well as ones they haven't put any money into yet but are at the center of positive news. And from those discussions, one particular group of startups came up repeatedly: those that specialize in artificial intelligence tech. From AI robots to software that uses machine learning to automate tasks, Silicon Valley is chock full of AI-focused startups.