RankmyAI has joined BRAIN Nederland, the Dutch AI industry association, as its first Founding Partner. To mark it, BRAIN interviewed our co-founder and CEO Jesse Weltevreden on why independent market data matters and what the Dutch AI sector needs to grow up. Below is that interview in English, lightly adapted for our readers.

New AI tools appear every day, new companies are founded, and existing products get AI bolted on. Tracking that is what RankmyAI does, with more than 63,000 tools and companies in the database. But for co-founder and CEO Jesse Weltevreden, the point was never the count. The point is insight.

We want to understand how the AI landscape develops: where new companies emerge, which use cases gain traction, where investment goes, and which countries and regions develop particular specialisations.

That knowledge now feeds research for governments, universities, trade associations and international organisations, including the United Nations.

Independence as the starting point

One thing sets RankmyAI apart from most commercial AI directories: a position cannot be bought. No paid top spots, no affiliate deals deciding which tool sits at the top. The rankings are built from measurable market signals, website traffic, reviews and investment, and the methodology is public.

We deliberately want to look beyond the hype around individual tools. In the end the question is which solutions actually gain traction, and which companies create real value.

In a market that produces new promises almost weekly, that distinction keeps getting more important.

More than 2,000 Dutch AI tools and companies

RankmyAI follows the Dutch landscape closely and now maps more than 2,000 Dutch AI tools and companies, active in almost every sector, from healthcare and data science to marketing, finance, industry and retail. But numbers do not tell the whole story.

The number of AI companies says little in itself about the quality of a landscape. What matters more is which tools are actually used, which companies create real value, and which of them manage to outgrow the startup phase.

Measured internationally, the Dutch AI landscape is relatively young and consists largely of smaller companies. Weltevreden sees the opportunity for companies building specialised AI solutions for specific sectors and applications. What the sector lacks, he argues, is a structure in which companies, knowledge institutions, investors and government find each other more easily.

Why BRAIN Nederland

That structure is what BRAIN Nederland is building. BRAIN is a young industry association that brings together the companies that develop and sell AI and the organisations that want to use it responsibly: government, education, healthcare, SMEs and larger businesses. Its starting point is a problem RankmyAI recognises. New tools, platforms and AI services follow each other so quickly that it has become hard to tell serious providers from companies riding the hype. BRAIN wants to change that, not by slowing innovation down but by setting standards for quality, transparency and responsible use, with a code of conduct and, in time, a quality mark.

RankmyAI joined from the start as a Founding Member, and went a step further as Founding Partner. The two fit together without much explaining. BRAIN wants to make quality visible and separate serious providers from the hype; RankmyAI already measures exactly that, independently and without commercial interest. Where BRAIN sets the standards, RankmyAI brings the data.

As a Founding Partner we want to contribute to the growth, professionalisation and responsible development of AI in the Netherlands, and we bring our data, our research experience and an international perspective to that.

Hans Schuurmans, chair of BRAIN Nederland: RankmyAI has built something the Dutch AI sector can be proud of. They are not only leading in the Netherlands. Their data, research and insights are used worldwide by organisations that want to understand the AI landscape properly. RankmyAI joining BRAIN Nederland as a Founding Partner is therefore very valuable. Together we can make developments in our market more visible and ground the debate about the future of AI in the Netherlands in facts.

What comes next

BRAIN Nederland and RankmyAI intend to share insights on the development of the Dutch AI sector, supported by data rather than assumptions or incidents: where the Netherlands is strong, where development lags, and how the Dutch landscape compares with other countries.

Precisely because AI is still developing, it matters that organisations find each other and get organised.

And perhaps that is where data makes the difference. Not by predicting which hype will be biggest tomorrow, but by showing what is actually happening.

Adapted from an interview published in Dutch by BRAIN Nederland. Read the original: brainnederland.nl