Top Tech Startups in Chicago, IL in 2026

Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™. Braze helps brands deliver great customer experiences that drive value both for consumers and for their businesses. Built on a foundation of composable intelligence, BrazeAI™ allows marketers to combine and activate AI agents, models, and features at every touchpoint throughout the Braze Customer Engagement Platform for smarter, faster, and more meaningful customer engagement. From cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered decisioning and optimization, Braze enables companies to turn action into interaction through autonomous, 1:1 personalized experiences. The company has been consistently recognized as a Leader in marketing technology by industry analysts, and was named a G2 “Best of Marketing and Digital Advertising Software Product” in 2026. Braze was also named a 2026 Best Places to Work by Built In, a 2025 America’s Greenest Companies by Newsweek, and a 2025 Fortune Best Workplace in Technology™ by Great Place To Work®. The company is headquartered in New York with 15 offices across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Learn more at braze.com.

Chime was created with the mission to make financial peace of mind a reality for millions of Americans. We're one of the fastest-growing financial technology companies in the U.S., offering banking services that are helpful, easy, and free—because we want to profit with our members, not from them. Our model doesn’t rely on overdraft, monthly service, minimum balance, or other member fees—it just focuses on delivering member value. How does Chime work? We partner with regional banks to design member-first financial products. This creates a more competitive market with better, lower-cost options for everyday Americans who aren’t being served well by traditional banks. We offer access to bank accounts with fee-free overdraft, provide members the chance to receive early access to their paychecks, help them improve their credit, and more! We help drive innovation, inclusion, and access across the industry with one of the most experienced leadership teams in fintech guiding us along the way. We were recently valued at over $25.5B and we’ve raised over $1.7B in funding from leading investors including Sequoia Capital Global Equities, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Dragoneer, DST, Coatue, Iconiq, Menlo Ventures and others. *Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by, and debit card issued by, The Bancorp Bank or Stride Bank, N.A.; Members FDIC.

Upbound is the industry’s first platform for building internal cloud platforms. Designed around control planes, Upbound offers a new methodology for building an internal cloud platform, purpose-built for your organization. Customers can quickly build, deploy, manage, secure, and use their platforms all from a single point of control.

Varsity Tutors is a live learning platform that connects students and professionals with personalized instruction to achieve any goal. To date, students have accessed more than three million hours of live instruction on the platform. Experts are available to meet in person or through the company’s award-winning online and mobile platforms, which account for the majority of all sessions.

At DRW, we identify and capture trading and investment opportunities globally. What sets us apart is our diversified approach—trading across many asset classes and instruments, in markets around the world, with horizons from seconds to years. We succeed by bringing together sophisticated technology, in-depth research and careful risk management. DRW is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in London, Montreal, New York, San Francisco and Singapore.

Pinterest is the world's first visual discovery engine. People use Pinterest to discover ideas to try in their daily lives. More than 300 million people around the world use Pinterest to dream, plan and prepare for things they want to do in life. We always start by asking: whose problem are we solving? Is it significant? Are we making Pinners lives better? If products don't work for people they don't work for us. The success of Pinterest depends on the ownership of every Pinployee. We all own Pinterest and work to achieve results that benefit everyone, not just specific teams or individuals.

In 2012, our five entrepreneurs asked themselves "why is it easier to get unbiased information about a $100 hotel room than a $100,000 piece of software?" The next day, we founded G2. We’ve published 3,006,600+ reviews that are helping millions of businesses make better buying decisions .We’ve raised $100M to change the way businesses research, buy, and manage their software and services. We serve every buyer and seller of tech and services in the world. We provide unique, authentic peer advice in real time. Our culture code is "PEAK", which stands for "Performance ", Entrepreneurship", "Authenticity", and "Kindness". By capturing our collective wisdom, we will make purchasing business technology as easy as buying consumer products.

Peloton is the leading interactive fitness platform globally, with a passionate community of more than 7 million Members in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia. Peloton makes fitness entertaining, approachable, effective, and convenient, while fostering social connections that motivate its Members to commit to their fitness journeys. Consumers can access the Peloton library with thousands of live and on-demand classes at the gym, at home, on the road, or wherever they choose to move, through the Peloton Bike, Peloton Tread, Peloton Bike+, Peloton Guide, and Peloton App on any iOS or Android device and select smart TVs. Through Peloton Corporate Wellness or Peloton Commercial, organizations and enterprises also have access to the Peloton platform and select Peloton products for their teams and customers. An innovator at the nexus of fitness, technology, and media, Peloton reinvented the fitness industry by developing a first-of-its-kind subscription platform that seamlessly combines the best equipment, proprietary networked software, world-class streaming digital fitness and wellness content, and best-in-class fitness Instructors.

About Zenskar Zenskar is an AI-native revenue automation platform built to handle real-world complexity. It sits between your CRM and ERP and automate everything in between: billing, revenue recognition, collections, usage metering, and analytics. Across any pricing model, any entity structure, any currency. Our vision: Zero-Touch: Finance. Agents execute. Humans supervise. Finance teams set the rules. Zenskar runs them. Founded by [Apurv Bansal](linkedin.com/in/bansalapurv) and [Saurabh Agarwal](linkedin.com/in/saurabh--agrawal), second-time founders whose previous startups were acquired by Snapdeal and Gaana. The team brings experience from Google, Deutsche Bank, Elevation Capital, Harvard Business School and IITs. We have 5x'd revenue in the past year.

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We are driven by the excitement of building technologies, inventing products, and providing services that change lives. We embrace new ways of doing things, make decisions quickly, and are not afraid to fail. We have the scope and capabilities of a large company, and the spirit and heart of a small one. Together, Amazonians research and develop new technologies from Amazon Web Services to Alexa on behalf of our customers: shoppers, sellers, content creators, and developers around the world. Our mission is to be Earth's most customer-centric company. Our actions, goals, projects, programs, and inventions begin and end with the customer top of mind. You'll also hear us say that at Amazon, it's always "Day 1."​ What do we mean? That our approach remains the same as it was on Amazon's very first day - to make smart, fast decisions, stay nimble, invent, and focus on delighting our customers.