Cloud

Cloud 100 2021 List Reveal

With 29 new companies joining the Cloud 100 this year, the definitive ranking of the top private cloud companies is now worth a cumulative total of $518 billion.

On behalf of Bessemer Venture Partners, Forbes, and Salesforce Ventures, we are excited to reveal the sixth annual Cloud 100. To create this list, we evaluated hundreds of the best and brightest private companies in cloud computing. Every year, the competition gets tougher to make the list, meaning this year’s group is the strongest to date.

These cloud standouts act as an industry standard, and evidence of the private cloud market's continued strength, even after a challenging year.

This year’s list saw a cohort of newcomers, with 29 additional names joining the Cloud 100 this year. The combined market value of these new entries represents more than 100 billion dollars, reflecting the broader economy’s shift to digital during the pandemic and beyond. Some of the most valuable newcomers include fraud prevention software Forter and virtual events business Hopin.

Cloud 100 newcomers

Attentive #12
Hopin #21
Scale AI #32
Calendly #33
MessageBird #35
Forter #48
Cedar #53
Razorpay #57
Outsystems #61
Chainalysis #64
MX #67
Kong Inc. #68
Contentful #71
Rapyd #75
Mambu #77
Grafana Labs #80
ActiveCampaign #83
Flutterwave #84
Entrata #86
Workato #87
Fanruan #89
OwnBackup #90
Socure #91
Jushuitan Network Technology #92
Shippo #94
Loom #96
6Sense #97
Papaya Global #98
Axonius #100

Top 20 highlights

Ecommerce’s recent growth — up more than 13% from pre-pandemic levels — helps boost Attentive and Klaviyo into the top 20, as brands look for new ways to market to buyers online. The top 20 also sees some new faces due to a record number of companies that graduated off the list since last year — more than 20 and counting, including names such as Snowflake, UiPath, Procore, WalkMe, Auth0, Segment, and many more.

The top 20’s biggest movers are TalkDesk, which moved up 36 places to number 17, and design tool Figma, which moves 22 spots and now sits at number 7.

The list’s biggest movers overall: Revenue Intelligence provider Gong leaped up 43 positions to number 28; Amplitude in product intelligence and Highspot in sales enablement both jumped 52 slots to numbers 37 and 46, respectively.

And LaunchDarkly jumped 53 slots, all the way up from last year’s number 100. Check out our Cloud 100 package for more on the DevOps business led by CEO Edith Harbaugh.

Now, let’s talk more about the Top 10 — the cloud’s private company leaders.

Top 10 Cloud Leaders

Freshworks — Customer support software business Freshworks is valued at 10 billion dollars, based in the Bay Area.
Checkout.com — London-founded Checkout.com provides online payment solutions that improve a user's checkout experience, and is one of Europe’s most valuable startups.
ServiceTitan — the software platform for tradespeople cracks the top 10 after raising $200 million at an $8 billion valuation last month.
Figma — Led by CEO Dylan Field, design software business Figma recently launched a punny brainstorming product, FigJam, and reached a $10 billion valuation.
Plaid — It looked like fintech startup Plaid would be off these lists moving forward when it agreed to be acquired by Visa in January 2020. But with that deal off, the open banking company is now flying high with a valuation north of $13 billion.
Toast — Despite a trying year for restaurants, Boston-based Toast held on to the number 5 slot as businesses have bounced back for its hospitality software.
HashiCorp — Forbes 30 under 30 alumni Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar maintain their number 4 slot from last year. But CEO Dave McJannet now calls the shots at the open-source cloud infrastructure business.
Canva — Led by Melanie Perkins, Canva moves up to number 3 on the list as its design software spreads across the globe from its Australian roots.
Databricks — Based in the Bay Area, Databricks’ software for AI tools has gone from UC Berkeley project to a $28 billion valuation.
Stripe — after falling to number 2 last year, Stripe is back at the top of the Cloud 100 list. That makes it five of six years at number one for the payments company founded by the Collison brothers, and valued at $95 billion.

These ranks get tougher to reach and remain in every year, so it’s quite an achievement for any company on the Cloud 100 list to breakthrough. To see where companies landed and dive into the full list, go to Forbes.

To see which other companies have made The Cloud 100 throughout the years, visit The Cloud 100 Archives.