Top 10 startups in 2023: Leading the way in 10 trending industries

San Jose-based Ambient.ai is trailblazing the world of enterprise security with an AI platform that turns traditional camera systems into 24/7 guardians.

Founded by Stanford AI experts in 2017 and backed by over $70M from top VCs (including an October 2023 round), Ambient.ai has a 50-200 person team dedicated to developing a unified, AI-powered physical security platform. It’s used by top tech companies like Adobe to reduce risk, improve security operation efficiency, and gain critical insights. The company claims its real-time visual threat detection reduces false alarms by 95%, accelerates investigation 20X faster, and unlocks security insights.

Named on the YC Top Companies List 2021 and 2022, and the Forbes Cloud 100 Rising Stars 2020, the company is on a mission to “turn the impossible into the inevitable” and seeking top talent to get there.

OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco, is perhaps the hottest tech company of 2023, having released the massively disruptive ChatGPT and its initial incarnations and set off an “AI Spring” of innovation.

The company's mission centers on harnessing the power of AI to create advanced, versatile technologies. OpenAI's work spans a range of AI applications, from natural language processing to robotics, continually pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve. Their commitment to pioneering new frontiers in AI technology is evident in their groundbreaking projects and research publications.

With billions in funding from Microsoft, the company has quickly expanded its team to over 200 and continues to recruit new talent.

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San Francisco’s Hive is making significant strides in the red-hot arena of intelligent automation.

Established in 2017 by Stanford graduates, Hive has attracted over $100M in funding from top investors with its innovative approach to structuring to the unstructured. Companies like Reddit trust the company to bring near-human level accuracy to automated tasks.

What has set Hive apart from the crowd, so to speak, is its crowd. At the heart of the company’s approach is a community of over 2M people who help fine-tune its massive training data set, which powers a set of APIs for all sorts of things from moderation to OCR recognition to autonomous systems.

The company has offices in San Francisco and Delhi and Hive employs a team of 200+ people (as of December 2023). The company raised over $120M from an impressive list of investors, including General Catalyst.

“At the heart of what we’re doing is building AI models that can help automate work that used to be manual,” says Kevin Guo, Hive’s co-founder and CEO.

Stanford-backed Tawkify aims to transform matchmaking for the digital age with a mix of real-life matchmaking and new digital tools. The female-founded company pairs potential pairs using an algorithmic love potion and offers tailored advice to make the date a success. Dates are hand-curated, though the tech behind the hood is enough to make developerslustful.

Artsy’s mission is to make all the world’s art accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

The company uses its tech to grant universal access to the exclusive world of galleries and auctions. Their online database details 1M+ images by 100k creators across movements, eras and regions—all discoverable in one place.

By centralizing inventory once dispersed across inaccessible channels, this New York platform advances art education and collection with an elegantly designed, mobile-friendly experience.

Over $100M in funding powers their mission of serving both seasoned patrons and casual appreciators. Artsy continues to expand its team into 2024 to empower more people to discover and engage with the arts.

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The Athletic delivers premium localized sports coverage directly to die-hard fans. Founded in 2016 by former Strava and McKinsey alumni and acquired by The New York Times for $550M, this Bay Area company builds in-depth narratives through 300+ writers distributed across 50+ North American and U.K. markets. After aggressively expanding its team in 2023, The Athletic continues seeking talent in 2024 to raise the bar for sports journalism.

Parafin is a San Francisco-based fintech startup seeking to revolutionize small and medium business financing. Led by former Robinhood data scientists, this 50-200 person company developed an API platform connecting businesses with growth capital partners. Armed with $94M in funding, Parafin is on a mission to create and nurture an ecosystem where entrepreneurship can thrive. They’re busy expanding the team and their product.

SFR3 Fund is a real estate fund and innovative startup wrapped into one. Co-founded by Google Express alumni, the company enlists a 201-500 person team to tackle the affordable housing crisis by renovating distressed homes to rentable condition. Headquartered in Mill Valley, Calif., the company has created over 10k affordable units in cities across the U.S. by optimizing the entire process with a proprietary platform its team developed.

Bay Area-based Gusto is transforming small business operations with a slick web platform for managing payroll, benefits, HR compliance, and more. Gusto’s 1k+ team offers a fully integrated people management experience, freeing up founders, CFOs, and HR managers to focus on other tasks than back-office intricacies. Founded by Stanford engineers, Gusto serves over 100k organizations and has raised $500M to fuel its growth.

Abridge sits at the intersection of two booming industries: AI and healthtech. The Pittsburg-based company seeks to accelerate empathetic medical care with better record keeping using its voice recognition technology. Thousands of clinicians like Emory Healthcare rely on the company’s technology to automate record keeping. Abridge has a team of 50-200 and has amassed over $42M in VC funding from an impressive list of investors that includes Spark Capital, CVS Health Ventures, and the Mayo Clinic.

San Francisco’s NextPatient aims to humanize healthcare by making it easier to manage appointments. The company’s software is used to manage 400k+ medical appoints each month, improving patient experiences and freeing up admin time for health providers. Founded by MIT and Chicago alumni from Google and Zipcar, NextPatient’s enticing employee benefits helped it land Inc.’s Best Workplaces of 2023 list.

Medbill AI is an assistant that saves consumers time and money on healthcare and medical bills.

Medical bills are a massive problem. They are confusing, over 40% contain errors, 17% of claims are denied by insurance, and often represent very large sums of money. As a result, 100 million Americans are saddled with medical debt, and medical bills cause nearly 70% of personal bankruptcies in the US.

Dealing with unexpectedly high medical bills is time-consuming, complex, and stressful. Stuck between their providers, payers, and bill collectors, consumers too frequently have to make numerous phone calls, wait on hold, and even send paper letters and faxes. Appealing insurance denials, resolving billing errors, negotiating bills, and filing out-of-network claims require expert knowledge that most consumers don't have.

Thanks to AI and new healthcare regulations around data access and price transparency, we can now automate this soul-crushing work and empower consumers to fight back against this broken system. Beyond medical bills, we help people through their entire healthcare journey as they switch health insurance or look for care that fits their budget.
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If you're excited to work on this exciting problem, please get in touch! We're looking for talented founding engineers and designers to join us on this mission.

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- Julien Nakache - CEO & Founder

Datavant is on a mission to improve health outcomes by connecting the world’s health data. The remote-first company with a team of 1k+ created a health data ecosystem used by over 70k facilities, leading to more informed decisions and new insights. The company raised $40M from VCs and merged with another company to create on the world’s largest, independent data ecosystems.

Aurora Solar develops software that uses aerial scans to instantly assess if a home should install solar panels and generate a quote. This Bay Areas sustainable tech startup serves over 200k monthly quotes to solar companies, aiming to accelerate renewable adoption. With over $300M in funding, Aurora is expanding its team with tech talent that shares its pursuit for an equitable, solar-powered future.

Houston-based Amperon offers analytics superpowers to energy companies navigating the sustainability transition. By optimizing forecasting around renewable power production and usage, the company fills information gaps to smooth out green energy adoption. With offices in Texas and New York and nearly $10M in funding (including an October 2023 round) since its founding in 2018, Amperon is attracting engagement with talent on Wellfound as it looks to continue expanding its team in 2024.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Bidgely combines SaaS and AI to unlock energy insights that allow utilities and their consumers to advance sustainability goals. Their patented SaaS platform transforms multidimensional customer data into targeted recommendations personalized for individual usage patterns.

With over $75M in funding and an innovator spirit rooted in Silicon Valley, the company partners with utilities to shape tomorrow’s smart, efficient grid. Bidgely’s 30+ data scientists inform everything from EV integration to renewable energy planning through granular consumption modeling and load shaping visualizations. Their AI also enables usage-aware products and services while nudging households towards green behaviors.

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As remote learning explodes post-pandemic, Skool is reinventing distance education with community gamification. Founded by online course pioneers Sam Ovens and Daniel Kang, this Los Angeles startup blends lesson delivery, discussion forums and engagement incentives into a unified virtual campus facilitiating richer interpersonal growth. Having enabled numerous educators to complement content with social accountability and rewards, Skool empowers impactful 21st century teaching where students discover motivation through collaboration.

Nimble sits at the junction of two defining shifts—the AI boom and remote learning explosion. The all-remote, female-led company creates tools to modernize teacher recruiting. Backed by Stanford and Y Combinator, the company helps K-12 administrators identify and hire talented educators most likely to drive student success. Having already partnered with major districts to upgrade antiquated HR systems, Nimble aims to ensure access to outstanding instruction regardless of zip code.

Remote up-skilling is a growing need for organizations of all sized. Over the past decade ExecOnline has established itself as a leader in the arena, attracting an impressive fundraising haul along the way. The minority-founded company partners with top universities to deliver online leadership development, so that companies can upskill their talent remotely. The company is backed by $40M from investors including Kaplan Ventures and the VC arm of The Washington Post and continues to expand its team.

Amid the explosion of AI-enabled creativity, Polarr is bringing ingenious image editing innovation to the masses. Founded by four friends in 2014 and funded by over $12 million, this San Jose/Shenzhen visual technology company powers integrated camera apps from Samsung to Oppo through its acclaimed machine learning. But Polarr’s newest AI Copilots taking descriptive text to stunning visual life showcase their vanguard role in AI's creative renaissance. As visionary builders at the intersection of artificial intelligence and artistic possibility, Polarr is writing the next captivating chapter on visualization liberating human expression.

Bay Area-based Squint is poised to accelerate workforce productivity via its no-code augmented reality (AR) platform. Squint has developed an AR product that is described as "open world," meaning it can be created anywhere, on the spot, and doesn't require a QR code or a 3D model to detect objects and orient itself precisely.

By overlaying physical environments with intuitive instructions, checklists, and AI interactions, Squint allows enterprises like Volvo to streamline everything from factory workflows to field equipment maintenance.

The company has a team of 11-50, over 45 AR patents, and $19M in funding from leading investors to assist along its mission to make knowledge instantly accessible anywhere work happens.

At HeyGen, we envision a world where the camera is replaced by boundless imagination and cutting-edge AI. We believe that every team—no matter their size or technical acumen—should be able to articulate their unique message through compelling, personalized videos. We're not just here to make video creation 10x faster; we're here to empower businesses to be 10x more effective, liberating them from the constraints of traditional video production. Our mission transcends speeding up the creation process; it's about leveling the playing field and giving voice to ideas, unshackled and uninhibited.

After spending 6.5 years at Snapchat, a company revolutionizing the camera as a means of communication, we saw an unexplored frontier in the realm of professional video creation. This experience provided us with invaluable insights into the power of easily accessible content creation. Founded in December 2020, HeyGen was born out of a belief that this democratization should not be limited to just social interactions but extend to professional settings as well.

— Joshua Xu, Co-founder and CEO of HeyGen

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San Francisco’s Mixpanel aims to empower innovation through readily accessible, actionable insights. The Silicon Valley heavyweights backing the company are betting the company can work the same magic with marketers that it has with product teams. Mixpanel has become a go-tool for developers, who use it measure and manage things like engagement, conversion, and retention. The company recently launched a product for marketing analytics.

The company amassed nearly $300M in funding from top VCs like Sequoia and a16z and top angels like Marc Benioff and David Sacks and is using it to expand its team.

New York’s Yotpo is leading the charge in smarter, faster e-commerce marketing. Its integrated platform powers loyalty, SMS, reviews and visual content for brands like Patagonia to accelerate direct sales. Named a Forbes Cloud 100 company and a best place to work by BuiltInNYC, this forward-thinking innovator is out to captivate shoppers and arm brands with the competitive edge to win customers through data-driven experiences and employee-centric culture. Yotpo raised over $400M from investors and has hired a team of 501-1k dedicated to making every consumer touchpoint an opportunity.

Trunk brings robust developer experience infrastructure to engineering teams of all sizes through its unified workflow platform. Led by former Uber and Google engineers and backed by $28M in investment from heavy hitters like a16z, this small (11-50 people) remote-first startup makes continuous integration and delivery accessible for developers. Now code deployment bottlenecks become breakthroughs.

In just a couple of short years, thirdweb has quickly established itself as the preferred launchpad for web3 innovation.

thirdweb enables developers to easily launch NFTs, marketplaces, currencies and other web3 projects with things like automatically deployed smart contracts, SDKs, and admin interfaces. Thousands of developers who rely on the company to handle the complex details, freeing up time to build.

Founded in 2021, thirdweb has offices in San Francisco and New York With and has raised over $29M from some big names like Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk.

The company’s commitment to providing accessible, efficient tools aligns with the broader goal of advancing the next generation of the internet. With strategic partnerships and a growing list of investors,thirdweb is positioned to be a key player in the web3 development landscape.

TRM Labs, a San Francisco-based blockchain intelligence startup, is at the forefront of combating crypto-related financial crime.

The company is dedicated to creating a safer financial system and assembled an impressive team of threat intelligence experts from the FBI and U.S. Secret Service and data engineers from top tech firms to do the job. Trusted by PayPal, Visa, and government agencies including the FBI, TRM Labs has raised nearly $150M, including a recent $70M Series B.

With the crypto crime costing an estimated $10B in 2023, TRM's innovative tools are ever more crucial for large international institutions. The company continues to expand its team into 2024.

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Los Angeles-based RabbitHole is on a mission to build a meritocracy on the blockchain by innovating how tokens are distributed. The company believes that realizing crypto’s potential requires expanding access. Its unique approach allows communities to reward their most active creators, rather than mere speculators.

The platform lets holders complete tasks, build on-chain resumes, and earn ownership in networks like decentralized finance hubs. This shifts power away from centralized exchanges towards genuine adoption and sustainability.

The company raised $18M (Greylock, others) and continues to expand its 11-50 person team.

liblab is an engineering company, by developers for developers. Liblab writes code that writes code. We help companies build SDKs for their APIs in seconds. The company is headquartered in Austin, TX, and is remote-friendly.Liblab provides solutions to auto-generate code that helps developers be more productive and efficient. As a leading developer tools company, we tackle hard-core engineering challenges daily - from building code generators in multiple languages to AI research and slick UI. If you want to join us take a look at our career page to check our open positions. Come join our rocket ship early and enjoy the ride!

Liblab, an innovative engineering company founded by developers for developers, specializes in the art of code automation. At the heart of our mission is the creation of code that writes code, empowering companies to build SDKs for their APIs in seconds. With our headquarters situated in Austin, TX, Liblab proudly embraces a remote-friendly work culture.

Dedicated to enhancing developers' productivity and efficiency, Liblab stands as a frontrunner in the realm of developer tools. Our team works on cutting-edge solution to hard engineering challenges, ranging from code generators across multiple languages to engaging in AI research and delivering polished user interfaces.

If you're passionate about pushing the boundaries of technology and want to be part of a dynamic team, explore the exciting opportunities available on our career page. Join us early on this journey - aboard our rocket ship and enjoy the ride!

Liblab is backed by some impressive names in VC like Insight Partners, Zeev Ventures, and more. The company has raised $50M to date.

-Sagiv, Founder & CEO 

Baasi pioneers seamless digital interactions through an integrated platform unifying messaging, video and data sharing into customized communication hubs. Headquartered in Tbilisi with a Wilmington office, their 11-50 person team builds multifaceted bridges across once-siloed tools like email, chat and voice/video calls. In an increasingly distributed world, Baasi breaks down barriers to enhance connectivity and understanding. Their belief in technology designed thoughtfully to advance human bonds empowers unified experiences that cooperate across platforms for meaningful connection.

Instabase builds automation infrastructure that streamlines fragmented enterprise workflows. They’re on a mission to build cohesive enterprise software that works smarter together. The company’s low-code platform integrates siloed tasks into responsive, cross-functional applications, saving thousands of hours toggling disjointed software tools.

Trusted by companies like Goldman Sachs to boost productivity through automation, Instabase has raised over $130M and continues to expand its team in 2024.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Sendbird is helping lead the consumer engagement revolution with a chat API platform that powers modern apps like Reddit and Hinge. Sendbird APIs handle the infrastructure for efficient communications, freeing clients to focus on core competencies. With $170M raised from investors enthused by their mission to digitize human connections, the 200-500 person company is expanding its presence in places like Singapore, London, Germany, Seoul, and Bengaluru. As conversations become integral to apps across categories, Sendbird promises plug-and-play simplicity to unlock chat’s business-building potential.

Bassi

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