Nominees confidentially share financial data including valuation, revenue and growth rate. This generates a financial score, which is considered in conjunction with a people and culture score — based on diversity, headcount change and third-party data like employee ratings — and a market leadership score derived from feedback by dozens of C-suite peers at public companies no longer eligible for the list. Companies do not pay a fee for list placement or consideration.
No. 1 Stripe, No. 2 Databricks and No. 3 Canva have held their pole positions on Cloud 100 for two years in a row. The three companies alone represented $173 billion of the 2022 list’s $793 billion in total market value — reflective of a venture-backed ecosystem that has produced increasingly larger companies over time in terms of valuation, as well as revenue and employee count. Typical listmakers boast valuations of at least $1 billion, as was the case for every single honoree last year.
But, the 2022 list only captured the impact of a few months of financial pullback on cloud computing. This year’s list will reveal the effects in full force. A bevy of startups have seen their valuations slashed, either through their own volition or by markdowns from some of their investors; even the trio atop the list have not been immune to these cuts. Others have announced layoffs as they navigate continued market doldrums.
The bar to make Cloud 100 is high. Candidates must be private and not majority owned by another company. The average company last year had 1,300 employees, an $8 billion valuation and more than $600 million in venture capital raised .: fledgling startups which have raised less than $25 million in funding but have shown early promise to become a future breakout cloud company. Candidates should apply through the same submission process.