We're in the Wild West of artificial intelligence development and it is indeed an exciting time. Whether you fear AI or are part of the revolution, the rapid pace of development is showing no signs of slowing down. With advanced AI solutions popping up from every corner of the United States, AI is an equal-opportunist: a national landscape for developers across the country to shine. Tech giants like IBM and Microsoft are constantly iterating artificial intelligence engines to perform tasks from object recognition to transcription, and Watson is a household name-the AI landscape leaders are set, right? The limitation of AI tech coming out of these mega-companies is usability-applying the tech to extract meaningful, actionable data. It works, but does it matter?

Two-year-old DemandJump Inc. is one of the area's hottest startups--and it had a 2016 that many startups would kill for. Last year, the Indianapolis-based company won two TechPoint Mira awards (often called the Oscars of Indiana tech), was a finalist for the prestigious Red Herring Top 100 Global award, added former Wal-Mart marketing chief Julie Lyle to its team, and secured an investment from Boston-based venture capital heavyweight Bob Davoli. The 17-person company, which targets marketers with its artificial intelligence software, has not raised a ton of money--about $2.6 million so far. But it's approaching $1 million in annualized revenue with a product that's been on the market only nine months. And the company has caught the attention of research firms Forrester and Intelligentsia.

DemandJump, a Indianapolis, IN-based Artificial Intelligence Marketing (AIM) platform, raised 1.8m in seed funding. Investors include 4G Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Bob Davoli (Managing Director at Sigma Prime). The company intends to use the funds to expand its sales and development teams and to increase client success teams. Established in 2015 by Christopher Day, CEO, and Shawn Schwegman, CSO, DemandJump has just launched its new platform for marketers and brands to calibrate disparate online and offline data, using proprietary artificial intelligence techniques coupled with graph theory and algebraic topology, to identify the best allocation for any budget and resource.