ur sixth annual Cloud 100 ranking of the world’s top private cloud
companies, produced in partnership with Bessemer Venture
Partners and Salesforce Ventures, recognizes standouts in tech’s hottest category from small startups to private-equity-backed giants. The companies on the list, which hail from as far afield as Dublin and Bangalore, are selected for growth, sales, valuation and culture plus a reputation score derived in consultation with 34 CEO judges and executives from their public-cloud-company peers.
This year’s theme? Big numbers. Stripe, back at No. 1 on this year’s list after a one-year hiatus, is the highest-valued startup in the U.S, worth some $95 billion. Number two, Databricks, is valued at $28 billion, which would place it about halfway down the S&P 500 if it were public. Combined, the top 10 companies on the Cloud 100 are worth a staggering $190 billion. That includes $13.4 billion-valued fintech provider No. 6 Plaid, which returns to the list after its planned acquisition by Visa fell through in January, and No. 7 Figma, design software’s newest breakout, which moves up 22 slots on the heels of a recent $10 billion valuation.
With 17 companies from the 2020 list going public in the past year, a bumper crop of 29 true newcomers are on this year’s list. (Two companies, No. 81 Riskified and No. 85 DISCO, appear after going public, as their IPOs happened after we locked down our data in July.) The top-ranked newcomer Attentive, a remote-based text message marketer for brands, comes in 12th place followed by London-based virtual event firm Hopin in 21st.
While the list is diverse geographically, with twelve companies based outside of the U.S. and more founded internationally, less progress has been made in diversity of leadership. Just six companies on the Cloud 100 are helmed by women, led by Melanie Perkins at Canva, No. 3. Turn to our Cloud 100 Rising Stars below – eight of which are women-led – for the faces of cloud's future.
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A funding frenzy helped catapult 34 new companies onto the list and boost their combined market value to $514 billion, nearly double the total of a year ago. The No. 1 company on the list, America’s most valuable startup, accounts for nearly one-fifth of that sum.
Edited By Alex Konrad
Reported by David Jeans, Aayushi Pratap, Rashi Shrivastava, Becca Szkutak & Nina Wolpow