How Many AI Models Are There? Arena Rates 399
The Arena text board now rates 399 models from 52 labs. Only 5 labs have a model in its top 20. Supply keeps growing; the top keeps narrowing.
The signal
- LaunchesThe launch feed logged 11 new text and multimodal models from 8 labs in the 30 days to 10 Sept 2026, including Claude Fable 5.1 (1 Sep) and GPT-6 Astra (3 Sep).
- ArenaThe 2 Sept 2026 snapshot rates 22 models from 11 labs that were not on the 3 Aug 2026 board.
- ArenaOn the same snapshot, 13 labs have a model in the top 50; the other 39 rated labs do not.
Arena rates 399 text models from 52 labs, up from 10 models in May 2023. Yet only 5 labs hold its top 20 seats, down from 15 in Dec 2023.
Models with a rating, labs with at least one rated model, and labs with a model in the top 20, Arena text board (overall), 8 May 2023 – 2 Sept 2026. Log scale.
Counts each listed model, so "thinking" or effort variants of one model count separately, and retired models stay on the board. This dataset's 2023 snapshots have no GPT-4 row before 6 Dec 2023 and no Claude row before 7 Mar 2024, so early counts are a floor. Top-20 labs are counted only from the first snapshot with 40+ models. Two models with a blank organisation field are left out of lab counts.
Show the data (42 rows)
| Snapshot | Models rated | Labs | Labs in top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-05-08 | 10 | 9 | – |
| 2023-10-02 | 25 | 15 | – |
| 2024-01-09 | 45 | 26 | 15 |
| 2024-03-07 | 63 | 29 | 12 |
| 2024-04-10 | 70 | 31 | 9 |
| 2024-04-26 | 80 | 32 | 8 |
| 2024-05-20 | 84 | 33 | 7 |
| 2024-06-21 | 94 | 34 | 10 |
| 2024-07-16 | 98 | 34 | 9 |
| 2024-08-05 | 105 | 34 | 9 |
| 2024-08-28 | 111 | 36 | 8 |
| 2024-10-15 | 127 | 38 | 9 |
| 2024-11-20 | 135 | 40 | 9 |
| 2024-12-15 | 147 | 41 | 10 |
| 2025-01-19 | 158 | 42 | 12 |
| 2025-02-05 | 162 | 42 | 10 |
| 2025-02-21 | 167 | 42 | 9 |
| 2025-03-20 | 179 | 42 | 9 |
| 2025-04-09 | 182 | 42 | 8 |
| 2025-05-19 | 196 | 42 | 7 |
| 2025-06-11 | 198 | 42 | 8 |
| 2025-07-15 | 214 | 43 | 9 |
| 2025-08-07 | 228 | 44 | 8 |
| 2025-09-08 | 235 | 41 | 9 |
| 2025-10-07 | 256 | 43 | 9 |
| 2025-11-16 | 268 | 45 | 10 |
| 2025-12-04 | 279 | 48 | 10 |
| 2025-12-18 | 286 | 48 | 9 |
| 2026-01-27 | 300 | 50 | 8 |
| 2026-02-16 | 311 | 51 | 9 |
| 2026-02-24 | 316 | 52 | 9 |
| 2026-03-06 | 323 | 52 | 9 |
| 2026-03-26 | 334 | 52 | 9 |
| 2026-04-14 | 339 | 51 | 11 |
| 2026-04-28 | 351 | 51 | 10 |
| 2026-05-12 | 358 | 51 | 10 |
| 2026-06-04 | 365 | 51 | 8 |
| 2026-07-10 | 374 | 51 | 8 |
| 2026-07-26 | 380 | 52 | 7 |
| 2026-08-10 | 386 | 52 | 6 |
| 2026-09-01 | 398 | 52 | 6 |
| 2026-09-02 | 399 | 52 | 5 |
The Mode read
How many AI models are there? One public answer is the Arena text leaderboard, where people vote blind between two answers. Its 2 Sept 2026 snapshot rates 399 models from 52 labs, and labs announced 11 new text and multimodal models in the 30 days to 10 Sept 2026. The question for us is whether more supply means more contenders at the top.
It does not. The board grew from 10 models in May 2023 to 399, and the number of labs from 9 to 52. But the number of labs with a model in the top 20 peaked at 15 in Dec 2023, was 11 in Jan 2025 with 154 models rated, and is now 5. Anthropic, Google and Meta hold 17 of the 20 seats.
Model supply is no longer scarce. A buyer's attention is. With hundreds of models and a handful of labs at the top, the hard part for a team is choosing, and the companies that sit at that point of choice collect the traffic. Shipping model number 400 is a weak position; owning the place where teams pick one is a strong one.
Models are abundant. The shelf where buyers choose one is not.
What we would back: Gateways, evaluation tools and model marketplaces that already sit where teams pick a model.