When Matt Wampler cofounded ClearCOGS in 2021, putting artificial intelligence front and center seemed like an obvious choice.<\/p>\n
The Chicago- and Philadelphia-based restaurant-tech startup, then branded as ClearCOGS.ai, was developing machine learning tools to forecast restaurant demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started the company with the fundamental belief that if a restaurant knew their future, they would make better decisions,\u201d Wampler told Technical.ly.<\/p>\n
Within months, ClearCOGS<\/a> began backing away from the AI-forward branding. This was before ChatGPT was a household term, and Wampler found that restaurant operators were wary of the technology.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was still the Terminator back then,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n ClearCOGS moved to clearcogs.com. Then generative AI exploded into public consciousness<\/a> in late 2022, and the cultural meaning of AI changed almost overnight.<\/p>\n The company began publishing more content about AI, some of which drew tens of thousands of views.<\/p>\n \u201cAI was back in fashion,\u201d Wampler said.<\/p>\n \u201cBrands kind of have to stand a test of time\u2026 Will your name hold up?\u201d<\/p>\n Sandy Taccone, Blue Blaze Associates<\/p>\n But ClearCOGS didn\u2019t put AI back in its name, a decision Wampler says he\u2019s glad it made. As large language models became increasingly synonymous with AI, he said an AI-branded ClearCOGS could have been mistaken for a chatbot company.<\/p>\n Founders choosing names today are operating in a market where AI is becoming a normal part of new software products, even as the label carries a broader, more visible backlash around jobs, environmental impact and low-quality content.<\/p>\n The money flowing into the sector hasn\u2019t slowed the branding debate. AI and machine-learning companies accounted for 65.4% of all U.S. venture capital deal value in 2025<\/a>, according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. That level of investment has made AI one of tech\u2019s dominant categories, and it\u2019s made it harder for AI-driven companies to stand out.<\/p>\n South Jersey-founded Runpod<\/a>, now headquartered in San Francisco, made a similar naming choice around the same time as ClearCOGS. Runpod launched in March 2022, just months before ChatGPT\u2019s public release. Its founders\u2019 believed that machine learning would dramatically change software development.<\/p>\n CEO Zhen Lu said they named the company for the product \u2014 cloud computing environments, or \u201cpods,\u201d that users could quickly start up and run \u2014 rather than putting AI in the name.<\/p>\n His test for founders considering an AI name is straightforward: \u201cWhether it will still describe the company in 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n When \u2018AI\u2019 can say too much \u2014 or too little<\/p>\n Meghan Richter, founder and chief strategist at Philadelphia-based MRketable<\/a>, said she\u2019s seeing technology companies move away from leading with AI in their branding and messaging because the technology itself is becoming less distinctive.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is considered table stakes,\u201d Richter said.<\/p>\n For a company trying to stand out, putting AI front and center may not do the trick. Our data analysis suggests it doesn\u2019t offer an obvious fundraising edge, either.<\/p>\n Technical.ly analyzed 200 U.S.-based Y Combinator<\/a> companies doing AI-related work, using an August 2025 snapshot of YC company data. The sample included 100 companies with AI visibly in their names and 100 without it, matched by factors including their YC class, industry and company stage and supplemented with PitchBook fundraising data.<\/p>\n PitchBook had fundraising totals for both companies in 79 matched pairs.<\/p>\n Of those pairs, the AI-named startup had raised more in 25, the startup without AI in its name had raised more in 31, and 23 were tied. Median total raised was $500,000 in both broader groups.<\/p>\n The analysis isn\u2019t a census of AI startups, and it can\u2019t show whether a company name caused a particular fundraising outcome. Some PitchBook funding records were also unavailable. But the sample offers little evidence of an obvious fundraising advantage for putting AI in a startup\u2019s name.<\/p>\n And investors aren\u2019t the only audience founders have to consider.<\/p>\n Richter said one recent client uses AI but deliberately avoids emphasizing it because its target customers have already encountered AI-enabled competitors associated with poor customer service, security concerns and inaccurate results.<\/p>\n Companies, she said, are better served by emphasizing the problem they solve and the value they create rather than the technology powering the product.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean AI has no branding value. Sandy Taccone, cofounder and CEO of Wilmington-based Blue Blaze Associates<\/a>, said putting it in a company name can immediately signal technical credibility, particularly if artificial intelligence genuinely is central to what the company does.<\/p>\n The problem, Taccone said, is that what AI communicates today may not be what it communicates a few years from now.<\/p>\n \u201cBrands kind of have to stand a test of time,\u201d Taccone said. That\u2019s especially difficult when both the technology and the language surrounding it are changing quickly. \u201cWho knows where this is going to be in another six months or a year, two years out?\u201d she said. \u201cThen will your name hold up?\u201d<\/p>\n AI, she said, can still be emphasized in places that are easier to change than a company name, including marketing campaigns, website content, product messaging or taglines. That lets a startup take advantage of what the term communicates now without necessarily tying its corporate identity to it indefinitely.<\/p>\n \u201cTry not to hamstring yourself with a name that might not grow with you after a couple of years,\u201d Taccone said.<\/p>\n A name that outlives the technology wave<\/p>\n Rick Nucci had already watched a different technology label go from selling point to something businesses simply expected.<\/p>\n