Top Software Startups in 2026

We want to encourage employees to adopt better cybersecurity practices in a way that's actually effective, and entertaining enough that the training doesn't feel like work. Think Duolingo, but for cybersecurity. We created a platform to roll out a cybersecurity awareness program quickly and easily by sending short conversations of just 3-4 minutes. The platform also simulates phishing attacks to prepare employees to face hackers in a safe environment. Created in 2020, Riot has raised $45m with leading investors (Y Combinator, Left Lane, Base10, Funders Club and Frst Capital) and is now protecting more than 2 millions employees in over 2,000 companies (including Intercom, Deel, and Deezer) all over the world. Cybersecurity impacts everyone, every day, and is now the number one risk to any organization, from small businesses to big firms. And yet, in most companies the cybersecurity culture is non-existent. Hackers know this, and they're taking advantage by targeting the weakest link: employees. We're on a mission to fix that for good.

As network and service operators and developers, we’ve spent our professional lives designing and running large-scale networks. We know the shortcomings of available tools. What we always wanted — but never found — was an infrastructure visibility solution that’s scalable, powerful, easy to use, and affordable. We started Kentik to create that solution.

Most backends were designed for a world where humans read every line of code before it shipped. Today, though, software is being written by developers and their agents together. Codebases are growing faster than any team can review them and the assumptions that used to hold everything together are quietly eroding. Convex was built to solve that. Convex is a reactive backend platform where correctness is the default, for humans and agents alike. Transactions are ACID so concurrent writes never corrupt data, everything is TypeScript end to end so a hallucinated field name is a build error not a production incident, and sync and caching are automatic so there's no glue code to subtly rot. The guarantees engineers used to enforce by reading every line, the platform enforces instead. We're a small, in-person team in San Francisco who care deeply about what we're building and who we're building it with. Application demands are changing faster than the infrastructure underneath them, and defining what the right platform looks like for this new world is still the domain of very talented humans. We want you to be one of them.

Madison Reed (madison-reed.com) is an e-commerce start-up with a team of 180+ rock stars in San Francisco. We’re revolutionizing the $50B hair care market using technology (web, mobile, tablet, social) to radically innovate the user experience and business model. Madison Reed is headquartered in SF and backed by top-tier venture capital firms Norwest VP, True Ventures, Maveron and Shea Ventures.

ToolJet is an AI platform that empowers teams to build and deploy internal tools in minutes - turning ideas into business applications faster than ever. With 35K+ stars on GitHub, we’re one of the most loved open source platforms in the developer community. We partner with industry leaders - from telecom giants, to financial institutions, to cutting-edge unicorns and startups across the globe. Our 50-member team works across the US and India, building at the intersection of AI and productivity. Backed by Microsoft’s M12, Nexus Venture Partners, January Capital, and Ratio Ventures, we’re on a mission to redefine how businesses create software - faster, smarter, and more accessible for everyone.

Softr is the easiest way to build custom apps and portals from Airtable, in minutes. #nocode required. With Softr, you can build client portals, internal tools, marketplaces, online communities, resource directories, websites and more. Our mission is to democratize the engineering genius. Start for free - softr.io

At Speckle, we’re on a mission to shake up the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry. To do that, we're building the data layer for AEC to operationalize how the built environment industry works with data and automation. Think of us as a cross between GitHub and Palantir, with an opportunity to significantly impact a $10 trillion industry. Our platform already powers workflows on billion-dollar projects at leading firms like Suffolk Construction, SOM, Multiconsult, WSP, and Stantec. Now, we're focused on bringing a paradigm-shifting product to as many customers as possible. We're building a generational company that will revolutionize how one of the world's largest industries operates. We’re doing that by breaking down barriers and connecting architects, engineers, and designers across every project stage with data. Speckle is backed by top-tier investors and works with some of the most innovative teams in AEC who are tired of outdated workflows and ready to transform how their organizations use data. Our dynamic team is spread across the U.S. and Europe. We value flexibility and hold regular in-person working sessions to keep us moving in the same direction, quickly.

AI is changing how software gets built. Code production is becoming a commodity. The focus is shifting from writing code to orchestrating, verifying, and governing change – and the toolchain is the new constraint. We're at the center of this shift. We build Develocity, the context-engineering layer for AI-driven software delivery used by some of the world's leading software organizations – Netflix, Airbnb, Spotify, SAP, major global banks, and hundreds more. Develocity helps software teams achieve delivery excellence through deep observability, build and test acceleration and efficiency, and AI-powered intelligence across the entire toolchain – for Gradle Build Tool, Apache Maven™, sbt, Bazel, npm, and Python, with support for additional build tools coming soon.

Madhive is the leading technology company engineered for modern TV advertising. Through its self-service platform, advertisers can seamlessly customize and automate the buying process into one operating system. This allows advertisers to plan, target, activate, and measure their campaigns with greater simplicity, accountability, reach, and control. Powered by an industry-leading bidder and device graph that processes 260 billion available ad opportunities per day, Madhive delivers precise, brand-safe audience connections efficiently at scale. The company is trusted by the leading local content owners, creators and distributors, including FOX, Scripps and TEGNA's Premion, as well as national agencies and brands, powering more than half a billion dollars in media across 12,000+ daily campaigns. To learn more, visit madhive.com.

Chicory believes in the power of recipes to inspire consumers and drive commerce. As the leading contextual commerce advertising platform, we transform recipe content into commerce media. Our platform powers a network of recipe publishers and retailers that CPG brands use to reach 123 million high-intent grocery shoppers each month. Chicory's contextual advertising and shoppable recipe solutions can be found on 5,200+ websites and food blogs, including the Food Network, Delish and LandOLakes.com. Sites enabled with our technology take grocery shoppers from inspiration to checkout in just a few clicks, driving products to cart for 60+ leading retailers. Recognized as a 2022 Top 50 Best Small Companies to Work For by BuiltIn NYC and as a 2022 Fastest-Growing Private Company in America by Inc. 5000, we believe that what sets Chicory apart is our diverse experiences and skillsets coupled with our shared values. Learn more at chicory.co.