AI startups are building the future. And they run on Rippling.

What do today’s fastest-growing AI companies have in common?  They run on Rippling. 

The majority of the Forbes AI 50, including Cursor, Clay, Hebbia, Runway, Harvey, Sierra, Decagon, Synthesia, as well as thousands of other fast-growing startups rely on Rippling to:

1. Win world-class AI talent against tech giants.

2. Scale fast without having to switch systems or add software as they grow.

3. Eliminate as much of the administrative work across HR, IT, and Finance as possible. 

Rippling is how AI’s top founders win the talent war 

Today, small AI startups compete for top talent who are getting life-changing offers from large AI labs at Meta and Google. But founders on Rippling have a crucial ace up their sleeve: access to enterprise benefits — without the massive cost or complexity. 

How do we do it? Rippling groups startups into one massive benefits pool through our PEO, giving us the negotiating power of a 50,000+ person organization when it comes to healthcare, dental, vision, and other perks. So instead of offering whatever basic health plan you can afford as a tiny company, you get access to the same premium benefits that Fortune 500 companies provide their employees.

Smart founders realize they are not just competing on vision and equity alone. Candidates want both upside and stability, and with Rippling, you can give them both.

Smart founders futureproof their business by choosing Rippling from day one

Every minute spent switching between payroll systems, insurance providers, expense tools, corporate cards, and device management platforms is a minute not spent on model training, customer discovery, or product iteration.

The sharpest AI founders ruthlessly eliminate anything that doesn't directly contribute to building better AI technology. Their operational stack is brutal in its simplicity: AI copilots for productivity multiplication, and Rippling as their single system of record for everything else.

Clay, the AI-powered GTM platform, used Rippling to automate 80% of its onboarding tasks and grow 5x in 18 months.

Sierra, a platform for agentic AI customer support founded by former Salesforce and Google Labs executives, has also leaned on Rippling in a period of hyper-growth. As Sierra’s headcount soared from six to 60 in a single year, Rippling provided a scalable and easy-to-use solution every step of the way. "We've been growing fast, and Rippling had no issues keeping pace. It gives every new hire peace of mind so we can focus on supporting our customers,” said Clay Bavor, Sierra’s co-founder.

Rippling powers all-in-one ops without the overhead

Early-stage AI founders usually face a tradeoff: manage admin work themselves or burn headcount on ops hires. Rippling removes that tradeoff entirely, so founding teams can stay heads-down on building, without losing momentum to admin work or bloated overhead.

Take Cursor, a leading AI-powered code editor, for example. Today, they have roughly 150 employees. Rippling was the first piece of software they ever bought, and it has grown with them as they reached over $500 million in annual revenue in just two years.

Think about what that means. The Founder/CEO of a $500+ million ARR business was personally running payroll, because Rippling made it that simple. No payroll admin, no dedicated HR team, and no operations specialists. 

When you hire a new employee, Rippling handles the entire flow: offer letter generation, background checks, payroll setup, benefits enrollment, laptop provisioning, and app access. What used to require coordinating across five different systems and three different vendors now happens in a single workflow.

Winning founders are building with AI and scaling with Rippling

The difference between companies that ship monthly and companies that ship daily often comes down to operational friction. Every broken workflow, every manual handoff, every system that doesn't talk to the others creates drag that accumulates over time.

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The next breakout AI company is hiring talent today, shipping tomorrow, and scaling next week. If you’re still stitching tools together and things fall through the cracks, you’re already behind.

The best AI companies don’t just run on Rippling. They rely on it to move fast and scale smarter. Learn more about Startup Stack, our exclusive offer for forward-thinking founders, here.