Top 10 Highest Valued Startups in the world
1. Bytedance, China
Founder: Zhang Yiming
ByteDance Ltd. is a Beijing-based Chinese multinational internet technology company. Zhang Yiming founded it in 2012. ByteDance operates a number of content platforms that inform, educate, entertain, and encourage people from various languages, cultures, and religions.
ByteDance is the parent company of popular video-sharing social networking services TikTok and Vigo Video, among others, with the infamous app Tiktok surpassing 2 billion downloads worldwide on the App Store and Google Play. Toutiao, a news aggregator app that uses AI algorithms to track the reader’s habits and deliver relevant content, is also owned by Bytedance.
2. Kuaishou, China
Founder: Su Hua, Cheng Yixiao
Kuaishou is a short video social platform that is not widely used in the Western world. It is a platform for short video sharing with over 200 million active users in 2019. Kuaishou is frequently referred to as Kwai in overseas markets and is among the most downloaded apps on Google Play and the App Store.
Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao founded Kuaishou in March 2011. Tiktok, the infamous app, is Kuaishou’s direct competitor.
3. Ant Group, China
Founder: Jack Ma
Ant Group is a subsidiary of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth. Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay, is the owner of China’s largest digital payments platform, Alipay. The latter claims to serve approximately 80 million merchants and more than 1 billion users.
The company is currently valued at $144 billion less than the appraised value of $295 billion. This was partly due to Ant’s cancellation of its $37 billion IPO round in November 2020.
4. Airbnb, USA
Founders: Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk
Airbnb is a lodging marketplace that connects travelers to over 6 million unique places to stay comfortably and at their leisure in nearly 100,000 cities across 191 countries. The company does not own any of the real estate listings; it simply acts as a broker, earning a commission on each booking.
In August 2008, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan, and Blecharczyk founded Airbnb. Airbnb is currently valued at $130 billion.
5. Stripe, USA
Founder: Patrick Collison and John Collison
Stripe is a payment processing platform for online merchants. Stripe provides web developers with an API that allows them to integrate payment processing into their websites and mobile applications. Stripe was founded in 2009 in San Francisco, California, and the United States by Patrick Collison and John Collison.
Stripe’s platform enables other businesses to accept payments over the internet. Stripe’s competitors include Square, Adyen, PayPal, WePay, and others.
6. SpaceX, USA
Founder: Elon Musk
It’s no surprise that SpaceX made the list of the world’s top ten most valuable startups. SpaceX is a private American aerospace manufacturer and provider of space transportation services that produce rocket engines and thrusters. SpaceX has created a number of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
Elon Musk, who also owns Tesla and PayPal, founded SpaceX on May 6, 2002, and it is now headquartered in Hawthorne, California, USA. SpaceX was the first private space company to send humans into orbit. SpaceX’s primary goal is to reduce space transportation costs and colonize Mars.
7. Didi Chuxing, China
Founder: Cheng Wei
Didi Chuxing is a global leader in mobile transportation. DiDi offers automobile services such as sales, leasing, financing, maintenance, fleet management, electric vehicle charging, and vehicle co-development with automakers. Didi optimizes the platform’s dispatch system and route planning services using artificial intelligence technologies and machine learning.
Didi is similar to the transportation service Uber, but it provides cheaper rides. The DiDi platform handles over 10 billion passenger trips per year. Didi has several subsidiaries, including 99, Uber (China) Ltd, DIDI Bus, Xiaoju, Automobile Solutions Co., AssureSec, Qingju Bike, Shanghai Dahuangfeng, Network Information Systems.
8. Klarna, Sweden
Founders: Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, Victor Jacobsson
Klarna is a fintech company based in Stockholm, Sweden that provides online payment services to enable digital payments such as payments for online storefronts and other direct payments, such as post-purchase payments. Klarna recently raised $639 million in funding led by Softbank Vision Fund II and other investors, raising its valuation to $46 billion as of June 2021.
9. Roblox Corporation, USA
Founders: David Baszucki, Erik Cassel
Roblox Corporation is a San Mateo, California-based video game developer. In 2006, Roblox Corporation created Roblox, an online gaming platform and game creation system. Currently, the company employs approximately 1,234 people.
Roblox, the platform for lego-like user-generated games went public at a valuation of $41.9 bn, as of March 2021
10. Canva, Australia
Founder: Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams
Canva is an Australian graphics design platform founded in Perth by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams and headquartered in Sydney. Users can use this platform to create website banners, presentations, social media posts, documents, and other visual content online or via the Canva app. Canva also offers a variety of free templates. Furthermore, the app provides paid subscriptions such as Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise, which include a wide range of additional content and other functionalities.
