Over Half of AI Unicorns Publish Zero Research

The AI industry's pivot from open academic publishing to proprietary secrecy threatens scientific reproducibility and long-term innovation.

• –Over half of AI unicorns have not published a single peer-reviewed paper, highlighting a stark gap between marketing claims and peer-evaluated rigor.
• –Research impact is heavily centralized, with a tiny fraction of well-funded labs producing almost all cited papers while the rest operate as black boxes.
• –Venture valuations show no connection to scientific contribution, proving that funding favors proprietary commercial moats over open scientific advancement.
• –Withholding technical details under the guise of competitive advantage risks disguising limitations, ultimately slowing broader scientific progress.