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Top 100 Tech, Business and Entertainment Startups to Watch in 2027
Startups
The startup world is changing faster than ever, and 2027 is shaping up to be a year where some of today’s emerging companies could become tomorrow’s major technology, business and entertainment brands. For entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, investors and anyone paying close attention to where the market is heading, knowing which startups are making moves early can provide a valuable advantage. This is why we have put together this list of the Top 100 Tech, Business and Entertainment Startups to Watch in 2027.
Our research team has spent time analysing the companies, industries, products, business models and trends that are shaping the next phase of the startup ecosystem. We have looked beyond companies that are simply generating headlines and focused on startups that are building interesting products, solving real problems, attracting users, entering new markets and creating opportunities in areas with strong growth potential. From artificial intelligence and fintech to e-commerce, cybersecurity, media, entertainment, gaming, creator platforms and other emerging technologies, this list brings together startups that deserve closer attention as we move into 2027.
For emerging business owners and startup founders, these companies can provide ideas about what is working, what customers are demanding and where new opportunities may be developing. For established business owners and CEOs, they can also serve as companies to watch for potential partnerships, competitive intelligence, new technologies, investment opportunities or simply a better understanding of how the next generation of businesses is being built. Some of these startups may already be gaining significant traction, while others are still relatively early in their journey.
This is not simply a list of companies we think are interesting. It is a research-driven look at the startups and business ideas that could have a meaningful impact on technology, commerce and entertainment in 2027 and beyond. As you go through the list, pay close attention to the industries they are entering, the problems they are solving, the technologies they are using and the markets they are targeting. Whether you are looking for the next big startup to invest in, a company to learn from, a potential competitor to monitor or the next business opportunity to explore, these are the tech, business and entertainment startups we believe you should be watching in 2027.
The startup world in 2027 is being shaped by artificial intelligence, new financial infrastructure and a fresh wave of creator and entertainment businesses. Generative AI labs such as Black Forest Labs, ElevenLabs and Runway are changing how images, voices and video are made, while newcomers like Unrivaled are building new kinds of sports and media properties from scratch.
Business software is moving just as fast. Companies like CRED, Ramp and Rippling are using data and automation to help teams sell, spend and hire more efficiently, and fintechs across Africa, India and Latin America are bringing banking and payments to millions of new customers.
Below is our list of 100 tech, business and entertainment startups worth keeping an eye on in 2027. Funding figures are approximate totals based on publicly reported information and may have changed since publication.
Top 10 Picks
1. CRED
AI | B2B | CRM | Marketing Automation | Media and Entertainment | Predictive Analytics | SaaS | Sales Automation | Sports
CRED builds an intelligent hub for businesses that uses predictive intelligence to help them find and win new customers. Their platform integrates with existing sales and marketing systems, analyzing real-world signals to guide go-to-market teams.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Anthony Meir, Chaitanya Shah, Jon Carr-Harris |
| Funding Amount | $15M |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Seed |
| Top Investors | Gaingels, Alumni Ventures, Defy.vc, HOF Capital, BAM Ventures |
2. Unrivaled
Basketball | Media and Entertainment | Sports | Sports Leagues and Teams
Unrivaled is building a new women’s basketball league to provide an offseason platform for elite athletes. The league is the first of its kind to be player-owned and will feature top talent competing in 3-on-3 and 1-on-1 games.
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier |
| Funding Amount | $43.7M |
| Startup Size | Founding Team (1-10) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Bessemer Venture Partners, Serena Ventures, Avenue Capital Group, Warner Bros., Next Legacy Partners |
3. Black Forest Labs
AI | Generative AI | Image Generation | Media and Entertainment | Open Source
Black Forest Labs develops image and video generation models that creative teams and developers use to produce visuals from text prompts. The company was founded by the researchers behind the original Stable Diffusion work and has grown quickly since its first release.
| Headquarters | Freiburg, Germany |
| Year Founded | 2024 |
| Founders | Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Patrick Esser |
| Funding Amount | $330M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures |
4. Cursor (Anysphere)
AI | Coding | Developer Tools | Generative AI | SaaS
Cursor is an AI-first code editor that helps developers write, edit and understand software using natural language. Its rapid adoption among professional engineers has made it one of the fastest-growing software products of the AI era.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger |
| Funding Amount | $3B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Nvidia |
5. ElevenLabs
AI | Audio | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Voice
ElevenLabs builds realistic AI voice technology for text-to-speech, dubbing and conversational agents. Publishers, studios and developers use it to create audiobooks, localize video and power voice assistants in dozens of languages.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski |
| Funding Amount | $780M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Growth, Nat Friedman |
6. Ramp
B2B | Fintech | Corporate Cards | Expense Management | SaaS
Ramp offers corporate cards and spend management software that helps finance teams control costs and close their books faster. Its automation tools flag savings and enforce policies in real time across a company’s spending.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh, Gene Lee |
| Funding Amount | $2B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Growth Stage |
| Top Investors | Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Stripe |
7. Perplexity
AI | Search | Generative AI | Consumer | Research
Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that responds to questions with sourced summaries instead of a list of links. It has become a leading challenger to traditional search for research and everyday queries.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski |
| Funding Amount | $1.5B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | NEA, IVP, Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions, SoftBank Vision Fund |
8. Mistral AI
AI | Large Language Models | Open Source | Enterprise | Generative AI
Mistral AI builds open-weight and commercial large language models and positions itself as Europe’s leading AI lab. Enterprises and governments use its models and its Le Chat assistant to keep more control over their data and infrastructure.
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix |
| Funding Amount | $3B+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | ASML, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nvidia |
9. Lovable
AI | Coding | No-Code | Generative AI | SaaS
Lovable lets people build working web apps and websites by describing what they want in plain language. The Swedish startup grew from a small project into one of Europe’s fastest-growing software companies in its first two years.
| Headquarters | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Anton Osika, Fabian Hedin |
| Funding Amount | $500M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | CapitalG, Menlo Ventures, Accel, Creandum, 20VC |
10. Runway
AI | Video | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Creative Tools
Runway builds generative video and world models used by filmmakers, advertisers and artists to create and edit footage with AI. Its Gen series of models helped push AI video from experiment to production tool.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala, Anastasis Germanidis |
| Funding Amount | $800M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | General Atlantic, Nvidia, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Felicis |
More Startups to Watch
11. Sierra
AI | Customer Service | Enterprise | Conversational AI | SaaS
Sierra builds AI agents that handle customer conversations for large brands across chat, voice and email. The agents can complete tasks such as returns and account changes, not just answer questions.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Bret Taylor, Clay Bavor |
| Funding Amount | $635M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Greenoaks, ICONIQ Growth |
12. Harvey
AI | Legal Tech | Enterprise | Generative AI | Professional Services
Harvey provides AI assistants for law firms and corporate legal teams to draft, research and review documents. Major global firms use it to speed up routine legal work while keeping lawyers in control.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Winston Weinberg, Gabriel Pereyra |
| Funding Amount | $800M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, OpenAI Startup Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue |
13. Glean
AI | Enterprise Search | Workplace | SaaS | Generative AI
Glean connects to a company’s work apps and lets employees search and ask questions across all of them in one place. Its assistant respects existing permissions so people only see information they are allowed to access.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Arvind Jain, T.R. Vishwanath, Piyush Prahladka, Tony Gentilcore |
| Funding Amount | $765M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Altimeter Capital |
14. Hugging Face
AI | Machine Learning | Open Source | Developer Tools | Community
Hugging Face runs the most widely used open platform for sharing machine learning models, datasets and demo apps. Researchers and companies use its libraries and hub as the default place to publish and discover AI models.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, Thomas Wolf |
| Funding Amount | $395M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Salesforce Ventures, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, IBM |
15. Cohere
AI | Large Language Models | Enterprise | Generative AI | B2B
Cohere builds large language models designed for business use, with a focus on security, private deployment and multilingual support. Banks, telecoms and governments use its models for search, writing and workflow automation.
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, Ivan Zhang |
| Funding Amount | $1.5B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures |
16. Synthesia
AI | Video | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Enterprise
Synthesia turns text into studio-quality videos presented by lifelike AI avatars, with no cameras or actors needed. Companies use it for training, onboarding and marketing videos that can be translated into many languages in minutes.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerslev, Lourdes Agapito, Matthias Niessner |
| Funding Amount | $530M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Accel, Kleiner Perkins, GV, NEA, Nvidia |
17. Suno
AI | Music | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Consumer
Suno lets anyone create full songs with vocals and instruments by typing a short description. The platform has drawn millions of users and sparked wide debate about AI and the future of the music industry.
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Mikey Shulman, Georg Kucsko, Martin Camacho, Keenan Freyberg |
| Funding Amount | $375M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Menlo Ventures, NVentures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founder Collective |
18. Pika
AI | Video | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Creator Tools
Pika is an AI video platform that turns text prompts and images into short, stylized clips for social media and creative projects. It targets everyday creators as well as professionals who want quick visual effects.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Demi Guo, Chenlin Meng |
| Funding Amount | $135M |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Spark Capital, Greylock, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Conviction |
19. Luma AI
AI | Video | 3D | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment
Luma AI develops generative video and 3D models that creators use to produce cinematic clips and virtual scenes from simple inputs. Its Dream Machine product made high-quality AI video widely accessible.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Amit Jain, Alex Yu |
| Funding Amount | $1B |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | HUMAIN, AMD Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Amplify Partners, Nvidia |
20. Replit
AI | Coding | Developer Tools | Education | SaaS
Replit is a browser-based software development platform where people can build, run and deploy apps, increasingly through an AI agent. It serves everyone from students writing their first program to teams shipping products.
| Headquarters | Foster City, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Amjad Masad, Faris Masad, Haya Odeh |
| Funding Amount | $500M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Craft Ventures, Y Combinator |
21. Cognition
AI | Coding | Developer Tools | Autonomous Agents | Enterprise
Cognition is the company behind Devin, an AI software engineer designed to take on programming tasks from start to finish. It also acquired the Windsurf coding tool, expanding its reach among developers.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Scott Wu, Steven Hao, Walden Yan |
| Funding Amount | $700M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Founders Fund, 8VC, Lux Capital, Elad Gil |
22. Decagon
AI | Customer Support | Conversational AI | Enterprise | SaaS
Decagon builds AI customer support agents that resolve tickets across chat, email and voice for consumer and enterprise brands. Companies use it to cut response times and reduce the load on human support teams.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Jesse Zhang, Ashwin Sreenivas |
| Funding Amount | $400M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Index Ventures, Elad Gil |
23. Abridge
AI | Healthcare | Medical Documentation | Enterprise | Generative AI
Abridge uses AI to listen to doctor and patient conversations and automatically write clinical notes. Large health systems have adopted it to reduce paperwork and give clinicians more time with patients.
| Headquarters | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Shiv Rao, Zachary Lipton, Sandeep Konam |
| Funding Amount | $800M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Elad Gil, IVP, Spark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners |
24. Clay
AI | Sales | Go-to-Market | Data Enrichment | SaaS
Clay helps sales and marketing teams pull data about prospects from many sources and use AI to personalize outreach at scale. Its spreadsheet-style interface lets non-engineers build complex lead research workflows.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, Varun Anand |
| Funding Amount | $200M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, Meritech Capital, First Round Capital |
25. Writer
AI | Enterprise | Generative AI | Content | SaaS
Writer offers a full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises, including its own Palmyra models and tools for building company-specific agents. It focuses on brand consistency, governance and secure deployment for large organizations.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | May Habib, Waseem Alshikh |
| Funding Amount | $326M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | ICONIQ Growth, Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, Insight Partners, Adobe Ventures |
26. Stability AI
AI | Image Generation | Open Source | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment
Stability AI is best known for Stable Diffusion, an open image generation model that helped spark the generative AI boom. It now builds image, video, audio and 3D models for creative and enterprise users.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Emad Mostaque |
| Funding Amount | $180M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Venture Round |
| Top Investors | Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, WPP, Intel Capital |
27. Thinking Machines Lab
AI | Research | Generative AI | Foundation Models
Thinking Machines Lab is an AI research company led by former OpenAI leaders, working on models and tools that are easier for people to understand and customize. It raised one of the largest seed rounds in history shortly after launching.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2025 |
| Founders | Mira Murati, John Schulman |
| Funding Amount | $2B |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Seed |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel |
28. Safe Superintelligence
AI | Research | Foundation Models | Safety
Safe Superintelligence is a research lab with a single goal of building a safe superintelligent AI system. It operates with a small team and has not released commercial products.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2024 |
| Founders | Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, Daniel Levy |
| Funding Amount | $3B |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Greenoaks, Alphabet, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital |
29. Together AI
AI | Cloud | Infrastructure | Open Source | Developer Tools
Together AI provides a cloud platform for training, fine-tuning and running open-source AI models at scale. Developers use it as an alternative to closed model providers when they want more flexibility and control.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Re, Percy Liang |
| Funding Amount | $534M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Salesforce Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Nvidia, Prosperity7, General Catalyst |
30. Anduril
Defense | Autonomy | Hardware | AI | Aerospace
Anduril builds autonomous defense systems, including drones, sensors and software that connect them into a single battlefield picture. It has become one of the most prominent new defense contractors in the United States.
| Headquarters | Costa Mesa, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Matt Grimm, Trae Stephens, Joe Chen |
| Funding Amount | $5B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Series G |
| Top Investors | Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, General Catalyst |
31. Shield AI
Defense | AI | Autonomy | Aerospace | Hardware
Shield AI develops AI pilot software and unmanned aircraft that can operate without GPS or communications links. Its Hivemind autonomy software is designed to be fitted to many types of aircraft.
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Ryan Tseng, Brandon Tseng, Andrew Reiter |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Ventures, Riot Ventures, Disruptive |
32. Helsing
Defense | AI | Software | Autonomy | Europe
Helsing builds AI software and autonomous systems for European defense, including drones and tools that help commanders process battlefield data. The company has grown into one of Europe’s best-funded defense technology startups.
| Headquarters | Munich, Germany |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Torsten Reil, Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Köhler |
| Funding Amount | €1.4B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Prima Materia, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Saab |
33. Figure AI
Robotics | Humanoid | AI | Hardware | Manufacturing
Figure AI is building general-purpose humanoid robots intended to work in factories, warehouses and eventually homes. Its Figure 03 robot and Helix AI model are aimed at performing a wide range of physical tasks.
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Brett Adcock |
| Funding Amount | $1.9B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Parkway Venture Capital, Nvidia, Brookfield, Intel Capital, Microsoft |
34. Physical Intelligence
Robotics | AI | Foundation Models | Research
Physical Intelligence is developing general-purpose AI models that let different kinds of robots learn to perform physical tasks. Its goal is a single robot brain that can adapt to new jobs without being reprogrammed.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2024 |
| Founders | Karol Hausman, Sergey Levine, Chelsea Finn, Lachy Groom |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | CapitalG, Lux Capital, Thrive Capital, Bezos Expeditions, OpenAI |
35. Skild AI
Robotics | AI | Foundation Models | Hardware
Skild AI is building a general-purpose robotics foundation model that can control many types of robots. The company aims to give machines the ability to adapt to new environments and tasks.
| Headquarters | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Deepak Pathak, Abhinav Gupta |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | SoftBank, Nvidia, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Bezos Expeditions |
36. 1X Technologies
Robotics | Humanoid | AI | Consumer | Hardware
1X Technologies builds humanoid robots, including its NEO model designed for use in the home. The company is one of the first to take preorders for a household humanoid assistant.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Bernt Børnich |
| Funding Amount | $130M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | EQT Ventures, Tiger Global, OpenAI Startup Fund, Samsung NEXT |
37. Stripe
Fintech | Payments | Infrastructure | B2B | SaaS
Stripe provides payment processing and financial infrastructure used by millions of businesses to accept payments online. It also offers tools for billing, fraud prevention, banking-as-a-service and stablecoin payments.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2010 |
| Founders | Patrick Collison, John Collison |
| Funding Amount | $9B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Thrive Capital |
38. Revolut
Fintech | Banking | Consumer | Cryptocurrency | Mobile App
Revolut is a global digital bank offering accounts, cards, trading, crypto and international transfers through a single app. It has grown to tens of millions of customers and is pursuing banking licenses in major markets.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Nik Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko |
| Funding Amount | $1.7B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | TCV, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Greenoaks |
39. Plaid
Fintech | APIs | Infrastructure | B2B | Open Banking
Plaid provides the technology that lets apps connect securely to people’s bank accounts. Many of the best-known fintech and payment apps rely on it to verify accounts and access financial data.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Zach Perret, William Hockey |
| Funding Amount | $1.3B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Ribbit Capital |
40. Mercury
Fintech | Banking | B2B | Startups | SaaS
Mercury offers banking and financial tools designed for startups and small businesses, including accounts, cards and treasury. Its clean interface and integrations have made it a popular choice among founders.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Immad Akhund, Jason Zhang, Max Tagher |
| Funding Amount | $650M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital |
41. Deel
HR Tech | Payroll | Global Hiring | B2B | SaaS
Deel helps companies hire and pay employees and contractors in more than 100 countries from one platform. It handles contracts, payroll, compliance and benefits for fast-growing global teams.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Alex Bouaziz, Shuo Wang |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Ribbit Capital, Spark Capital |
42. Rippling
HR Tech | Payroll | IT Management | B2B | SaaS
Rippling combines HR, payroll, benefits, devices and app management in one workforce platform. Companies use it to onboard employees and manage their accounts, equipment and pay from a single system.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Parker Conrad, Prasanna Sankar |
| Funding Amount | $1.7B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Series G |
| Top Investors | Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks |
43. Notion
Productivity | Collaboration | AI | SaaS | Workplace
Notion is an all-in-one workspace for notes, documents, wikis and project management, with built-in AI features. It is used by individuals and companies as a flexible alternative to a stack of separate tools.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Ivan Zhao, Simon Last |
| Funding Amount | $418M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Naval Ravikant |
44. Canva
Design | Creative Tools | SaaS | Education | Consumer
Canva is an online design platform that lets non-designers create presentations, social posts, videos and documents from templates. It serves hundreds of millions of users and has expanded into AI design tools and workplace software.
| Headquarters | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams |
| Funding Amount | $580M+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Blackbird, Felicis, Sequoia Capital, T. Rowe Price |
45. Linear
Productivity | Developer Tools | Project Management | SaaS | Software Development
Linear is a project and issue tracking tool built for software teams, known for its speed and focused design. Product and engineering teams use it to plan work, track bugs and ship updates.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Karri Saarinen, Tuomas Artman, Jori Lallo |
| Funding Amount | $134M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Accel, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures |
46. Vercel
Developer Tools | Cloud | Web Development | Frontend | SaaS
Vercel provides a cloud platform for building and deploying fast websites and web apps, and is the creator of the Next.js framework. Developers use it to publish sites with built-in performance tooling and AI app support.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Guillermo Rauch |
| Funding Amount | $800M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Accel, GIC, Bedrock Capital, Tiger Global |
47. Supabase
Developer Tools | Database | Open Source | Backend | SaaS
Supabase is an open-source backend platform built around Postgres, offering a database, authentication and storage in one service. It has become a popular foundation for apps built with AI coding tools.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | Paul Copplestone, Ant Wilson |
| Funding Amount | $500M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Accel, Felicis, Coatue, Y Combinator |
48. Databricks
Data | AI | Analytics | Enterprise | Cloud
Databricks provides a unified data and AI platform that companies use to store data, run analytics and build machine learning models. It is one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Ali Ghodsi, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, Patrick Wendell, Andy Konwinski, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji |
| Funding Amount | $14B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Nvidia |
49. ClickHouse
Data | Database | Open Source | Analytics | Cloud
ClickHouse is a fast open-source database designed for real-time analytics on very large datasets. Its cloud service is used by companies that need to run complex queries on huge volumes of data in seconds.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Aaron Katz, Alexey Milovidov, Yury Izrailevsky |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Dragoneer, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue |
50. Vanta
Security | Compliance | B2B | Automation | SaaS
Vanta automates security and compliance work, helping companies prepare for audits such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001. It connects to a company’s systems and monitors them continuously to keep evidence up to date.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Christina Cacioppo |
| Funding Amount | $500M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, Wellington Management |
51. Flutterwave
Fintech | Payments | Africa | B2B | Infrastructure
Flutterwave provides payment infrastructure that lets businesses accept and send money across Africa and beyond. It supports cards, bank transfers and mobile money for merchants and global brands operating on the continent.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Olugbenga Agboola, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji |
| Funding Amount | $475M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | Tiger Global, Avenir Growth, Greycroft, Visa |
52. Moniepoint
Fintech | Banking | Africa | Payments | Small Business
Moniepoint provides business banking, payment terminals and lending to small businesses and individuals across Nigeria. It processes a large share of the country’s digital transactions and is expanding into other markets.
| Headquarters | Lagos, Nigeria |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Tosin Eniolorunda, Felix Ohiwerei |
| Funding Amount | $200M+ |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Development Partners International, Verod-Kepple, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Endeavor Catalyst, Google Black Founders Fund |
53. Kuda
Fintech | Banking | Africa | Mobile App | Consumer
Kuda is a Nigerian digital bank that offers accounts, cards and transfers entirely through a mobile app with no physical branches. It has built a large customer base among young, mobile-first Nigerians.
| Headquarters | Lagos, Nigeria |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Babs Ogundeyi, Musty Mustapha |
| Funding Amount | $91M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Valar Ventures, Target Global, Entrée Capital |
54. Andela
Talent | Remote Work | Africa | Marketplace | B2B
Andela connects companies with vetted software engineers and technology talent across Africa and other emerging markets. It began as a training program for African developers and grew into a global talent marketplace.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Jeremy Johnson, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Ian Carnevale, Christina Sass, Brice Nkengsa, Nadayar Enegesi, Seni Sulyman |
| Funding Amount | $381M |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Generation Investment Management, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Spark Capital, Whale Rock Capital, GV |
55. Chipper Cash
Fintech | Payments | Africa | Mobile App | Consumer
Chipper Cash lets people send and receive money across African countries with no fees on many transfers. The app also offers bill payments, crypto and investing features to its users.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Ham Serunjogi, Maijid Moujaled |
| Funding Amount | $302M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | SVB Capital, Tribe Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Deciens Capital |
56. Wave
Fintech | Mobile Money | Africa | Payments | Consumer
Wave offers low-fee mobile money services that let people in West Africa send, receive and save money from their phones. It has grown quickly by undercutting traditional mobile money providers on price.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Lincoln Quirk, Drew Durbin |
| Funding Amount | $200M+ |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series A |
| Top Investors | Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Stripe, Partech |
57. Whatnot
E-commerce | Live Shopping | Entertainment | Marketplace | Collectibles
Whatnot is a live video shopping marketplace where sellers auction collectibles, fashion and other goods to buyers in real time. It has turned shopping into an entertainment format with passionate communities around each category.
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Grant LaFontaine, Logan Head |
| Funding Amount | $900M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, CapitalG, Greycroft |
58. Substack
Media | Creator Economy | Newsletters | Subscriptions | Publishing
Substack gives writers and creators tools to publish newsletters, podcasts and video and charge readers directly. Independent journalists and commentators use it to build paying audiences without relying on advertising.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, Jairaj Sethi |
| Funding Amount | $200M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | BOND, The Chernin Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator |
59. Beehiiv
Media | Creator Economy | Newsletters | Marketing | SaaS
Beehiiv is a newsletter platform that helps publishers grow, monetize and analyze their email audiences. Its built-in ad network and referral tools have attracted many fast-growing media brands.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Tyler Denk, Jake Hurd, Benjamin Hargett |
| Funding Amount | $48M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Lightspeed Venture Partners, Streamlined Ventures, Y Combinator |
60. Patreon
Creator Economy | Membership | Media and Entertainment | Subscriptions | Community
Patreon lets creators earn recurring income by offering memberships and exclusive content to their fans. Musicians, podcasters, artists and video makers use it to fund their work directly from supporters.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Jack Conte, Sam Yam |
| Funding Amount | $400M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Thrive Capital, Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Glynn Capital |
61. Whoop
Wearables | Health | Fitness | Sports | Consumer
Whoop makes a screenless wearable band and membership service that tracks sleep, recovery and strain to guide training. It is popular with athletes and fitness enthusiasts who want daily data on their body’s readiness.
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Year Founded | 2012 |
| Founders | Will Ahmed, John Capodilupo, Aurelian Nicolae |
| Funding Amount | $400M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Abbott, IVP, Accomplice |
62. Oura
Wearables | Health | Consumer | Hardware | Sleep
Oura makes a smart ring that tracks sleep, activity and body signals and turns them into daily health scores. The Finnish company has become the leading brand in the smart ring category.
| Headquarters | Oulu, Finland |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | Petteri Lahtela, Kari Kivelä, Markku Koskela |
| Funding Amount | $900M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Fidelity Management & Research, ICONIQ Growth, Whale Rock Capital |
63. Stoke Space
Space | Aerospace | Launch | Hardware | Reusable Rockets
Stoke Space is developing a fully reusable rocket designed to be launched, landed and flown again quickly. Its approach aims to lower the cost of getting satellites and cargo to orbit.
| Headquarters | Kent, Washington, United States |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Andy Lapsa, Tom Feldman |
| Funding Amount | $900M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | US Innovative Technology Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, NEA, Spark Capital |
64. Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Energy | Fusion | Climate Tech | Hardware | Deep Tech
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building compact fusion power plants using high-temperature superconducting magnets. The company is working toward a demonstration machine that produces more energy than it consumes.
| Headquarters | Devens, Massachusetts, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Bob Mumgaard, Dan Brunner, Dennis Whyte, Brandon Sorbom |
| Funding Amount | $3B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B2 |
| Top Investors | Google, Nvidia, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Tiger Global, Eni |
65. Helion
Energy | Fusion | Climate Tech | Hardware | Deep Tech
Helion is developing fusion power plants that use pulsed magnetic fields to generate electricity directly. It has signed an agreement to supply power to a major technology company.
| Headquarters | Everett, Washington, United States |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Founders | David Kirtley, Chris Pihl, John Slough, George Votroubek |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Sam Altman, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Capricorn Investment Group |
66. Redwood Materials
Climate Tech | Batteries | Recycling | Energy Storage | Manufacturing
Redwood Materials recycles used batteries and electronics and turns recovered metals into new battery materials. It also repurposes old electric vehicle batteries for energy storage.
| Headquarters | Carson City, Nevada, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | JB Straubel, Alex Matthews |
| Funding Amount | $2B+ |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Eclipse Ventures, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, NVentures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund |
67. Midjourney
AI | Image Generation | Generative AI | Media and Entertainment | Consumer
Midjourney is an AI image generator known for its distinctive, artistic style, used through a web interface and Discord. It has reached a very large user base while remaining self-funded.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | David Holz |
| Funding Amount | Self-funded |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Bootstrapped |
| Top Investors | None disclosed |
68. Poolside
AI | Coding | Foundation Models | Enterprise | Developer Tools
Poolside builds foundation models focused on software development, aimed at organizations that need AI coding tools in secure environments. It trains its own models rather than relying on third-party providers.
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Jason Warner, Eiso Kant |
| Funding Amount | $626M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Bain Capital Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Nvidia, Felicis |
69. Hippocratic AI
AI | Healthcare | Conversational AI | Enterprise | Safety
Hippocratic AI builds safety-focused AI agents that handle non-diagnostic healthcare tasks such as patient calls, follow-ups and care coordination. Health systems use them to extend the reach of nurses and care teams.
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Munjal Shah, Meenesh Bhimani, Vishal Parikh |
| Funding Amount | $370M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Premji Invest |
70. Nothing
Consumer Electronics | Hardware | Smartphones | Design | Audio
Nothing is a consumer electronics brand known for its transparent design, including the Phone and Ear lines of products. Founded by the co-founder of OnePlus, it aims to bring a fresh design identity to everyday technology.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | Carl Pei, Akis Evangelidis |
| Funding Amount | $450M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | GV, EQT Ventures, Tiger Global, C Ventures, Highland Europe |
71. n8n
Automation | Workflow | Open Source | AI | Developer Tools
n8n is a workflow automation platform that lets teams connect apps and build AI-powered automations using a visual editor or code. Its source-available model and self-hosting option have made it popular with technical teams.
| Headquarters | Berlin, Germany |
| Year Founded | 2019 |
| Founders | Jan Oberhauser |
| Funding Amount | $240M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Accel, Sequoia Capital, Meritech Capital, NVentures |
72. DeepL
AI | Translation | Language | Enterprise | SaaS
DeepL provides AI translation and writing tools that are widely praised for natural-sounding results. Businesses and individuals use it to translate documents, websites and conversations across dozens of languages.
| Headquarters | Cologne, Germany |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Jarek Kutylowski |
| Funding Amount | $400M+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Index Ventures, IVP, Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners |
73. Wayve
Autonomous Vehicles | AI | Automotive | Self-Driving | Deep Tech
Wayve develops end-to-end AI driving software that learns to drive from data rather than relying on hand-coded rules or high-definition maps. It works with automakers and fleet operators to bring the technology to cars and robotaxis.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Alex Kendall, Amar Shah |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | SoftBank Group, Microsoft, Nvidia |
74. Isomorphic Labs
AI | Drug Discovery | Healthcare | Biotech | Research
Isomorphic Labs applies advanced AI to drug discovery, building on the protein structure breakthroughs of its sister company DeepMind. It partners with large pharmaceutical firms and is developing its own drug candidates.
| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Demis Hassabis |
| Funding Amount | $600M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series A |
| Top Investors | Thrive Capital, GV, Alphabet |
75. Mercor
AI | Hiring | Marketplace | Data | Talent
Mercor uses AI to match skilled professionals with companies that need experts, including labs that train AI models. It pays specialists such as doctors, lawyers and engineers to help improve model quality.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, Surya Midha |
| Funding Amount | $480M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Felicis, Benchmark, General Catalyst, Robinhood Ventures |
76. Sesame
AI | Voice | Conversational AI | Consumer | Hardware
Sesame is building conversational voice companions that aim to sound natural and emotionally aware. The company is also developing lightweight eyewear designed to put its AI voice assistant in everyday life.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Ryan Brown |
| Funding Amount | $300M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz |
77. Kalshi
Prediction Markets | Fintech | Sports | Regulated Exchange | Consumer
Kalshi is a regulated exchange where people trade on the outcomes of real-world events, from economic data to sports and entertainment. Its growth has made prediction markets a mainstream part of the financial and sports conversation.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Tarek Mansour, Luana Lopes Lara |
| Funding Amount | $1.5B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz |
78. Polymarket
Prediction Markets | Crypto | Fintech | Consumer | Blockchain
Polymarket is a prediction market platform where users trade on the outcomes of political, sporting and cultural events. It gained global attention for its odds during major elections and received a large strategic investment from a major exchange operator.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | Shayne Coplan |
| Funding Amount | $2B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Strategic Round |
| Top Investors | Intercontinental Exchange, Founders Fund, 1789 Capital, Vitalik Buterin |
79. Gamma
AI | Presentations | Productivity | Design | SaaS
Gamma uses AI to generate presentations, documents and websites from a simple prompt. It has grown rapidly by offering a faster alternative to traditional slide software.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | Grant Lee, Jon Noronha, James Fox |
| Funding Amount | $80M+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Andreessen Horowitz, Accel |
80. Gusto
HR Tech | Payroll | Small Business | B2B | SaaS
Gusto provides payroll, benefits and HR tools aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. It simplifies tax filing and employee onboarding for companies without a large HR department.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2011 |
| Founders | Josh Reeves, Edward Kim, Tomer London |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | General Catalyst, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group |
81. Airtable
Productivity | No-Code | Collaboration | AI | SaaS
Airtable combines the simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a database, letting teams build custom apps and workflows without code. Large enterprises use it to manage projects, content and operations in a flexible way.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2012 |
| Founders | Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, Emmett Nicholas |
| Funding Amount | $1.4B |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | Benchmark, Thrive Capital, Coatue |
82. Miro
Collaboration | Whiteboard | Productivity | Remote Work | SaaS
Miro is an online visual workspace where distributed teams brainstorm, map ideas and plan projects on a shared whiteboard. It is widely used for workshops, product planning and design collaboration.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2011 |
| Founders | Andrey Khusid, Oleg Shardin |
| Funding Amount | $476M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | ICONIQ Growth, Accel, Tiger Global, Salesforce Ventures |
83. Personio
HR Tech | Payroll | Europe | B2B | SaaS
Personio provides an all-in-one HR platform covering recruiting, payroll, time tracking and employee records for small and mid-sized companies. It is one of Europe’s leading HR software providers.
| Headquarters | Munich, Germany |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Hanno Renner, Roman Schumacher, Ignaz Forstmeier, Jonas Rieke |
| Funding Amount | $750M |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Index Ventures, Accel, Meritech Capital, Greenoaks |
84. OPay
Fintech | Payments | Africa | Mobile Money | Consumer
OPay offers mobile payments, digital banking and agent services to millions of people and small merchants in Nigeria. It has built a large network of agents that bring financial services to underbanked communities.
| Headquarters | Lagos, Nigeria |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Yahui Zhou |
| Funding Amount | $570M |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Sequoia Capital China, Meituan, Source Code Capital |
85. Razorpay
Fintech | Payments | India | B2B | Banking
Razorpay provides payment gateway, banking and lending tools that help Indian businesses accept and manage money online. It serves everything from small online stores to large enterprises.
| Headquarters | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India |
| Year Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar |
| Funding Amount | $740M |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | GIC, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator |
86. Zerodha
Fintech | Investing | India | Brokerage | Consumer
Zerodha is India’s largest stockbroker by number of active clients, known for its low-cost, flat-fee trading model. It has grown to this position without raising outside venture funding.
| Headquarters | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India |
| Year Founded | 2010 |
| Founders | Nithin Kamath, Nikhil Kamath |
| Funding Amount | Self-funded |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Bootstrapped |
| Top Investors | None disclosed |
87. Rappi
E-commerce | Delivery | Latin America | Super App | Consumer
Rappi is a Latin American super app offering food delivery, groceries, pharmacy, payments and more through one platform. It operates across multiple countries in the region and has expanded into financial services.
| Headquarters | Bogotá, Colombia |
| Year Founded | 2015 |
| Founders | Simón Borrero, Sebastián Mejía, Felipe Villamarín |
| Funding Amount | $2B+ |
| Startup Size | Enterprise Team (1,000+) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, T. Rowe Price |
88. Modal
AI | Infrastructure | Cloud | Developer Tools | Serverless
Modal offers a serverless cloud platform that lets developers run AI and data workloads on GPUs by writing ordinary code. It removes much of the setup work normally needed to deploy machine learning applications.
| Headquarters | New York, New York, United States |
| Year Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Erik Bernhardsson, Akshat Bubna |
| Funding Amount | $100M+ |
| Startup Size | Lean Team (11-50) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | Lux Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Amplify Partners |
89. Fireworks AI
AI | Inference | Infrastructure | Open Source | Developer Tools
Fireworks AI provides a fast inference platform for running and customizing open AI models in production. Companies building AI products use it to serve models quickly and at lower cost.
| Headquarters | Redwood City, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Lin Qiao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov |
| Funding Amount | $327M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Nvidia |
90. Xaira Therapeutics
AI | Drug Discovery | Biotech | Healthcare | Research
Xaira Therapeutics is a biotech company using machine learning to design new medicines. It launched with one of the largest initial funding rounds ever raised by a biotech startup.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2024 |
| Founders | Marc Tessier-Lavigne, David Baker |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series A |
| Top Investors | ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Labs |
91. Retool
Developer Tools | Low-Code | Internal Tools | Enterprise | SaaS
Retool lets teams build internal apps, dashboards and admin tools quickly by combining drag-and-drop components with code. Companies use it to connect to their databases and automate operational workflows.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | David Hsu |
| Funding Amount | $141M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Y Combinator |
92. Descript
AI | Video Editing | Podcasting | Media and Entertainment | Creator Tools
Descript lets creators edit audio and video by editing a text transcript, as easily as a document. Podcasters and video makers use its AI tools for voice cloning, filler word removal and automatic captions.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Andrew Mason, Laura Burkhauser |
| Funding Amount | $100M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series C |
| Top Investors | OpenAI Startup Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital |
93. Sorare
Football | Fantasy Sports | Blockchain | Gaming | Media and Entertainment
Sorare is a fantasy football game where players collect and trade digital player cards and compete using real match performances. It holds official licenses from major football clubs and leagues around the world.
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Year Founded | 2018 |
| Founders | Nicolas Julia, Adrien Montfort |
| Funding Amount | $740M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Benchmark, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners |
94. Nuro
Autonomous Vehicles | AI | Automotive | Self-Driving | Licensing
Nuro develops self-driving technology and licenses it to automakers and mobility companies. It began with autonomous delivery vehicles and now focuses on its driver software platform.
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2016 |
| Founders | Dave Ferguson, Jiajun Zhu |
| Funding Amount | $2B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Baillie Gifford, Greylock, Nvidia, Uber |
95. Form Energy
Energy | Batteries | Climate Tech | Energy Storage | Hardware
Form Energy is building iron-air batteries designed to store electricity for days at a time at low cost. Its technology aims to help power grids rely more on wind and solar energy.
| Headquarters | Somerville, Massachusetts, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Mateo Jaramillo, Yet-Ming Chiang, Ted Wiley, Marco Ferrara, William Woodford |
| Funding Amount | $1.2B+ |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series F |
| Top Investors | ArcelorMittal, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Eni Next, TPG Rise Climate, Coatue |
96. Lightmatter
AI | Chips | Photonics | Hardware | Infrastructure
Lightmatter develops photonic chips and interconnects that use light to move data between processors inside AI data centers. Its technology targets the bandwidth limits that slow down large AI computing clusters.
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Nick Harris, Thomas Graham, Darius Bunandar |
| Funding Amount | $850M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series D |
| Top Investors | GV, Fidelity Management & Research, T. Rowe Price, Viking Global Investors |
97. Ironclad
Legal Tech | Contracts | Enterprise | AI | SaaS
Ironclad provides contract lifecycle management software that helps legal and business teams create, negotiate and store agreements. Its AI features review contracts and flag risks to speed up deal approvals.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Jason Boehmig, Cai GoGwilt |
| Funding Amount | $333M |
| Startup Size | Mid-Size Team (201-500) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | Accel, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, BOND, Emergence Capital |
98. Zipline
Drones | Logistics | Healthcare | Robotics | Delivery
Zipline operates autonomous drones that deliver medical supplies, food and retail goods directly to homes and clinics. It began delivering blood in Rwanda and now runs large delivery networks in several countries.
| Headquarters | South San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, William Hetzler |
| Funding Amount | $1B+ |
| Startup Size | Large Team (501-1,000) |
| Last Funding Status | Late Stage |
| Top Investors | Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research, Sequoia Capital, Temasek, GV |
99. LangChain
AI | Developer Tools | Agents | Open Source | Infrastructure
LangChain provides open-source frameworks and tools for building, testing and monitoring applications powered by large language models. Developers use its LangGraph and LangSmith products to run AI agents in production.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2022 |
| Founders | Harrison Chase, Ankush Gola |
| Funding Amount | $160M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series B |
| Top Investors | IVP, Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, CapitalG |
100. PostHog
Analytics | Developer Tools | Open Source | Product | SaaS
PostHog is an open-source product analytics platform that combines event tracking, session replay, feature flags and experiments in one tool. Engineering and product teams use it to understand how people use their software.
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Year Founded | 2020 |
| Founders | James Hawkins, Tim Glaser |
| Funding Amount | $190M |
| Startup Size | Small Team (51-200) |
| Last Funding Status | Series E |
| Top Investors | GV, Y Combinator |
Conclusion
The startup landscape heading into 2027 is expected to be defined by more than rapid technological innovation. The companies most likely to stand out will be those that combine technology with real-world solutions, strong business models, local market knowledge and the ability to scale. From artificial intelligence and fintech to entertainment, media, e-commerce, healthtech, agritech, logistics and creator platforms, the next generation of startups is being built around changing consumer and business needs.
For investors, entrepreneurs, technology enthusiasts and business leaders, the top startups to watch in 2027 offer an opportunity to understand where the next wave of innovation may come from. AI is increasingly being integrated into practical products rather than existing only as a standalone technology, while African startups are applying it to areas such as financial services, agriculture, healthcare, logistics and business automation.
Entertainment is also becoming increasingly technology-driven. Streaming, gaming, creator platforms, digital advertising, AI-powered content production and mobile-first experiences are reshaping how audiences discover, consume and pay for content. In Nigeria and across Africa, the growth of digital media, AI and gaming creates particularly interesting opportunities for startups capable of combining local content and cultural relevance with scalable technology.
Ultimately, being included among the Top 100 Tech, Business and Entertainment Startups to Watch in 2027 does not guarantee future success. Startup performance can change quickly because of funding conditions, competition, regulation, technology, consumer behaviour and execution. However, these companies and the sectors they represent provide a useful window into where innovation, entrepreneurship and digital business could be heading in 2027.
10 Frequently Asked SEO Discovery Questions and Answers
1. What are the top startups to watch in 2027?
The top startups to watch in 2027 are expected to include companies operating in artificial intelligence, fintech, cybersecurity, healthtech, e-commerce, logistics, climate technology, entertainment, gaming, creator technology and digital infrastructure. The most interesting startups will generally be those solving large problems, demonstrating strong customer demand and developing business models that can scale beyond their initial markets.
2. Which technology startups are expected to grow in 2027?
AI, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, robotics, automation, data technology and AI-enabled business software are among the technology areas likely to attract significant attention in 2027. However, growth will not necessarily come only from companies developing AI models. Many startups are embedding AI into existing industries to make financial services, healthcare, agriculture, logistics and business operations more efficient.
3. What are the best startups to watch for investors in 2027?
For investors, promising startups in 2027 may be found in sectors with large addressable markets, strong customer demand, recurring revenue and clear paths to profitability. Fintech, AI, enterprise software, healthcare, climate technology, digital commerce and infrastructure remain important areas to monitor. Investors should nevertheless conduct independent due diligence because startup popularity, funding and media attention do not necessarily translate into financial success.
4. Which African startups should you watch in 2027?
African startups worth watching in 2027 are likely to span fintech, AI, commerce, logistics, agriculture, healthcare, entertainment and digital infrastructure. Major startup hubs include Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, Cape Town and Johannesburg, while other African markets are also producing emerging companies. The broader ecosystem is moving beyond traditional fintech toward AI and other technology-enabled sectors.
5. Why are AI startups important in 2027?
AI startups are important because artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a layer that can improve products and services across many industries. Instead of simply creating general-purpose AI tools, startups are using AI for customer service, fraud detection, content creation, healthcare, agriculture, logistics, financial analysis and business automation. This practical application of AI could create opportunities for startups that understand specific industry problems.
6. What entertainment startups should you watch in 2027?
Entertainment startups to watch in 2027 include companies involved in streaming, gaming, digital music, creator monetisation, ticketing, social entertainment and AI-powered content creation. The entertainment industry is increasingly mobile-first and digitally driven, while generative AI is opening new possibilities for content production, personalisation and local-language storytelling.
7. What business startups could become major companies in 2027?
Business startups with the potential to become major companies typically address large markets and solve problems that businesses or consumers encounter frequently. Enterprise software, fintech infrastructure, logistics, e-commerce, cybersecurity, AI automation and business-to-business platforms are important categories to monitor. Ultimately, execution, customer retention, financial discipline and scalability will determine which startups move from promising companies to major businesses.
8. What industries will have the most startup opportunities in 2027?
Some of the biggest startup opportunities in 2027 are likely to come from AI, fintech, healthcare, climate technology, cybersecurity, agriculture, logistics, entertainment, gaming and digital infrastructure. In Africa particularly, startups that adapt technology to local infrastructure, languages, payment systems and consumer behaviour could have significant opportunities. PwC’s African outlook highlights AI, digital advertising, streaming, gaming and mobile-first consumption as important areas of transformation.
9. How do you find startups to watch before they become successful?
Finding startups early requires looking beyond company popularity. Investors and researchers can examine startup funding rounds, product launches, customer growth, founders, partnerships, hiring activity, market size and technological differentiation. It is also useful to monitor startup accelerators, venture capital portfolios, technology publications, industry reports and emerging startup ecosystems to identify companies before they become widely known.
10. Are the top startups to watch in 2027 good investments?
Not necessarily. A startup appearing on a “companies to watch” list means that it has interesting growth potential, innovation or market relevance; it does not mean that its shares or private investment opportunities will generate returns. Startup investments can involve substantial risk, including failure, dilution, regulatory changes, competition and loss of capital. Anyone considering an investment should carry out detailed independent research and financial due diligence.
