Every month, Green Flag Digital reranks the top private tech companies not only by funding, but by web traffic and brand prominence. In February 2026, the top 3 spots go to xAI, Databricks, and Arena (formerly LMArena), each fundamental to the AI ecosystem that’s currently dominating funding rounds.
Taking ~50% of all global venture cash in 2025, AI projects are soaking up about 21% more venture value than in Q4 of 2024. But in 2026, which companies turn bucks is also paramount.
Mixing cash with web traffic and brand standing, we created a score that adds a new dimension to typical tech company rankings, speaking to the importance of market impact and brand authority without erasing the importance of funding altogether.
Here are our most recent findings.
Key Takeaways
- #1 xAI nabs the top spot from OpenAI, with #2 Databricks, and #3 Arena cementing AI dominance atop the podium.
- New to the top ten: xAI, Arena, Preply, and Decagon crack the list, demonstrating significant turnover from last month.
- OpenAI, Suno, and Substack post the strongest web traffic scores this month.
- For branded web search, none can touch Arena for its overall score (and +8000% year-over-year growth), though Kalshi is close behind.
- The analysis of 3,362 companies found the top 100 are dominated by AI-led industries and growth-stage funding rounds with HQ’s concentrated in the Bay Area.
Which 100 Tech Companies Score Highest?
We analyze thousands of companies every month to determine which are leading the way in terms of industry and consumer momentum.
These are the top 100 private tech companies.
Breaking Down The Top Ten Tech Companies
Zooming in on today’s top 10 companies, it’s clear they aren’t performing equally across all three categories: funding, web traffic, and branded search (keyword score).
Typically, companies progress from funding momentum to increased web traffic, and eventually to stronger brand recognition reflected in keyword searches.
Notably, the top five companies for web traffic did not rank within the overall Tech 100. As a result, the highest web traffic score among the top 100 belongs to OpenAI, which ranks #6 for web traffic.
Here’s how the current top 10 stack up across each category:
#1 xAI - $20B for Data Center and Hardware Buildout
xAI has appeared in the top ten before, returning to dominate this month on the strength of its most recent funding round: $20B just 26 days ago. The Series E AI giant behind X’s Grok has seen slight gains in web traffic this month as well, averaging 1.9% growth over the past 6 months. That’s not coming from branded search, through: the LLM has registered no change over 6 months, but has slid 18.21% in the past month in brand inquiries.
#2 Databricks – The Boring Tech Winning the AI Boom
Databricks appeared at #2 last month (its first time in the top ten) and has stayed in the silver position again. Building on its past #1 funding score, the company’s bank account gets another recent deposit that lands it at #2 this month: Databricks attracted $1.8B 9 days ago. Its raises have buoyed less dominant web traffic and keyword scores (#214 and #156, respectively). What Databricks lacks in consumer buzz, it makes up for in enterprise prowess: the data, AI, and business analytics company has helped redefine the lakehouse model that’s bringing data together in 2026.
#3 Arena - Battle Royale for AI Models
Arena triumphs on the strength of a #1 branded search score, meaning that while investors seem to favor it less than any other company in the top 5, users are another story. They’re looking for Arena by name, not just the services it offers. This series A AI comparison forum allows users to get answers from competing platforms, cross-check responses, and hone in on the right tool for their inquiry. The company’s #44 website ranking suggests that the model is serving a lot of users’ needs as AI models battle it out.
#4 OpenAI - First to Market Leads the Way
OpenAI has bobbed between #1 and #2 from November to January, depending on the tides of its funding rounds (12 so far for the large language model). This month, it slips to #4 as its funding rank falls to 23rd. Still, OpenAI’s #6 web traffic score suggests that plenty of watchers each month — 918,145,751 averaged over 6 months, to be precise — are checking out a company whose website isn’t even the name of the company itself.
#5 Kalshi - Prediction Markets Nip at Traditional Finance
Kalshi is a fintech firm with solid keyword search chops — only Arena sees users asking for it by name more often. With $1,643,244,988 in the bank, they’ll have some firepower to increase a branded search profile that’s already up over 800% over the last 6 months. It turns out the contract market that pushed prediction markets into the mainstream isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
#6 Anthropic - IPO Whispers Get Louder
Anthropic tumbles 2 steps down the ranking ladder this month. The AI model behind “Claude” has netted funding of $33,740,377,627, including the top 10’s highest most-recent raise: $13,000,000,000 4 months ago. But Anthropic hasn’t raised a round in 152 days, the longest dry streak in the top 10. And though it’s acquired just 2 other companies, its brand searches are growing, up almost 50% over 6 months ago.
#7 Lovable - Shifting the Labor Market
Lovable was new to the top 10 last month after a $330M holiday present, and remains there this month even though its funding ranking has fallen to the lowest among the top 10. That’s because this series B maintains strong staying power among users themselves. Its website traffic averages 22,412,828 and is growing, while branded search is up 50% over the last 6 months. It turns out that a lot of people are interested in vibe coding their latest project — with this Swedish platform helping them do it.
#8 Preply - A New Unicorn Leans into AI
Preply debuts in the top ten after netting $150M just 10 days ago. This series D tutoring marketplace is best known for language learning, and that B2C approach has helped nudge web visits and branded searches to higher rankings (both rank in the top 100). Nevertheless, traffic’s down this month to 17,513,425 on average, though branded inquiries are holding steady. Preply’s clawed its way to branded search success: as a digital PR darling, its upped its backlink profile 33% since the start of 2025, and its dedicated research hub has gotten recent coverage from outlets like SiliconANGLE.
#9 Decagon - AI Agents are an Enterprise Must-Have in 2026
Decagon debuts in the top 10 with a #3 funding score (its website rank still finishes outside the top 1,000). Traffic is, on average, about 94% less than the next lowest value among the top 10. But branded interest is up by around 49% year over year as the B2B agent startup proves that customer experience AI is ready to go mainstream.
#10 Mercor - Human Data is a Winning Bet in the AI Supply Chain
Mercor stays in the top 10 this month, holding tight for the 3rd month in a row after an autumn tumble. So while its most recent $350M raised 97 days ago is one of the lowest in the top ten, its branded web search growth outperforms the other top tech companies this month by a mile. Or rather, by its unprecedented year over year growth of 809%.
The Top 10 Ranking Tech Companies, Through Time
The top ten aren’t resting on their laurels. While some are consistent heavy-hitters (ahem, OpenAI), others are leveraging large funding rounds or a spike in interest to catapult them into long-term top-ten positions.
The Funding Index
Fundraising is constant, with 175 companies raising new money over the last 31 days.
The biggest winners for total raise, recent funding, and the biggest cash infusions right now? This month, it’s xAI. The company brought in $20B to top its 9 total funding rounds, giving it a total bank account of $42,731,221,423 (second only to OpenAI).
Funding score made the biggest difference for Databricks, Decagon, Zipline, and Upwind Security.
The Traffic Index
OpenAI takes the top spot this month for website traffic performance, combining overall traffic and growth over the past 6 months and 30 days. OpenAI is followed by Suno, Substack, and NPR. eCommerce shop Quince and top ten overall performers Gopuff, OnePay, Lovable and xAI also top the charts in the website category.
OpenAI’s traffic has dipped .16% this month, but that hasn’t cut into its outsized share of visitors, averaging ~918,145,751 monthly over the past 6 months.
The Branded Search Index
Branded search means more than clicks. It indicates deeper brand authority. Users know what they want and they’re seeking it out, not just landing on a company website through the power of SEO.
Arena? They’ve learned that lesson, ranking #1 overall. Of this month’s top 100, Kalshi, Periodic Labs, Mercor, and Lovable are all the top-performing brands by branded search.
Which Industries are Leading the Tech Race?
Some industries are more cutting-edge than others. And while those organizations tend to capture more funding, do they also capture the public imagination?
We allowed companies to have multiple industry tags, so among the 100 top-scoring companies today, 164 industries are represented, from space travel to collectibles.
Here are the ten industries represented most often:
Ultimately, AI represents 53 of the top 100. However, they’re clustered among the highest performers even more prominently: 8 of the top 10 are tagged with AI specifically.
Which Funding Types are On Top?
Brand-new companies without proven product-market fit can sometimes catch investors’ attention. But larger, more established entities need fuel for scaling. Which types of companies are pulling in the most funding right now?
Here’s the breakdown by company size:
In general, any index that considers funding is skewed toward later-stage startups. And that’s true this month: among the top 100, just 10 total companies are raising at the seed or A levels.
Arena (series A) is the only one that lands in the top ten, but that’s not all down to outsized recent funding. It’s also a top ten performer in branded web traffic.
Series A companies that land in the top 100 are Arena, Cosmos, Checkbox, Upscale AI, Corgi Insurance, and Concourse.
Also punching above their weight are independent radio organization, NPR, considered a seed-round (grant-funded) startup, Thinking Machine Lab, Proxima, and Periodic Labs.
Where are the Top 100 Tech Companies Located?
Regardless of what part of the puzzle they contribute, top-performing tech companies are likely to be headquartered in California, and specifically in the Bay Area, with San Francisco/Silicon Valley cities nurturing 17 of the top 25 companies.
Lovable’s Delaware digs (the vibe coding platform is Swedish), Kalshi and Rogo’s New York finance HQ, and Suno and Preply in greater Boston, MA, Gopuff and Skild AI in Pennsylvania, and Relativity in Chicago buck the trend.
With 52 of the top 100 in the Bay Area, there is little diversity outside the startup north star of Northern California.
Here’s what a map of the top-25 ranked tech companies reveals:
| Rank + Company | City, ST |
|---|---|
| #1 xAI | Palo Alto, CA |
| #2 Databricks | San Francisco, CA |
| #3 Arena | San Francisco, CA |
| #4 OpenAI | San Francisco, CA |
| #5 Kalshi | New York, NY |
| #6 Anthropic | San Francisco, CA |
| #7 Lovable | Dover, DE |
| #8 Preply | Brookline, MA |
| #9 Decagon | San Francisco, CA |
| #10 Mercor | San Francisco, CA |
| #11 ClickHouse | Mountain View, CA |
| #12 LiveKit | San Jose, CA |
| #13 Railway | San Francisco, CA |
| #14 Zipline | San Francisco, CA |
| #15 Scale | San Francisco, CA |
| #16 Skild AI | Pittsburgh, PA |
| #17 Suno | Cambridge, MA |
| #18 Mesh | San Francisco, CA |
| #19 Relativity | Chicago, IL |
| #20 Baseten | San Francisco, CA |
| #21 Kraken | San Francisco, CA |
| #22 Span | San Francisco, CA |
| #23 Upwind Security | San Francisco, CA |
| #24 Gopuff | Philadelphia, PA |
| #25 Rogo | New York, NY |
The Final Takeaway? Tech Companies Can’t Live on Funding Alone
Funding may fuel the fire, but it’s not the whole story. By layering digital signals, we gain a better understanding of which well-funded companies are experiencing growth from being truly useful and from building momentum and public presence, ultimately capturing both funding cycles and real people’s internet searches.
So as tech categories like AI continue to draw investor attention, our index helps spotlight those companies that are succeeding in turning that visibility into velocity and real market presence.
We’ll be watching to see who keeps climbing.
Methodology
To track industry buzz, we analyzed 3,362 tech companies, looking at 3 total categories: funding, monthly website traffic, and global keyword volume to assess which tech companies are riding a wave of sustained energy and which are actually turning that excitement into business progress.
Here’s how we broke it down:
Funding – 50%
- Number of Investors
- Number of Lead Investors
- Most recent funding amount
- Total funding amount
- Most recent funding
Website Analysis (Traffic) – 25%
- Monthly visits
- Average visits over time
- Percentage of visits (to normalize volume and allow better comparison across companies)
- Trend in monthly visits over the past 6 months
Keyword Analysis (Brand Search) – 25%
- Search volume
- Average keyword volume over time
- Search volume percent (to normalize volume and show overall strength)
- Keyword volume trend over the past 6 months
Data sources: Crunchbase, Keywords Everywhere, Google Trends, and SEMRush.
Full table of top 100 scoring tech companies and each category score, as well as # of acquisitions as of early February 2026:
| 1 | xAI | 100.00 | 100.0 | 89.5 | 61.4 | 2 |
| 2 | Databricks | 98.66 | 98.7 | 81.4 | 67.4 | 14 |
| 3 | Arena | 97.91 | 78.1 | 87.4 | 100.0 | |
| 4 | OpenAI | 97.20 | 85.2 | 95.4 | 75.3 | 14 |
| 5 | Kalshi | 95.86 | 79.1 | 83.2 | 94.8 | |
| 6 | Anthropic | 94.16 | 85.7 | 84.7 | 74.3 | 2 |
| 7 | Lovable | 92.68 | 77.7 | 87.6 | 82.2 | |
| 8 | Preply | 92.46 | 84.4 | 86.0 | 69.6 | |
| 9 | Decagon | 92.24 | 93.8 | 72.0 | 64.1 | |
| 10 | Mercor | 89.47 | 72.3 | 83.2 | 86.1 | |
| 11 | ClickHouse | 89.18 | 86.4 | 77.1 | 63.0 | 4 |
| 12 | LiveKit | 89.07 | 83.2 | 76.0 | 70.2 | |
| 13 | Railway | 88.89 | 82.8 | 83.0 | 63.4 | |
| 14 | Zipline | 88.86 | 91.0 | 63.8 | 66.1 | |
| 15 | Scale | 88.73 | 82.2 | 77.9 | 69.0 | 2 |
| 16 | Skild AI | 88.67 | 90.4 | 67.4 | 63.1 | |
| 17 | Suno | 88.64 | 72.8 | 91.2 | 74.2 | 2 |
| 18 | Mesh | 88.48 | 87.2 | 69.4 | 66.7 | |
| 19 | Relativity | 88.26 | 88.2 | 71.1 | 62.3 | 4 |
| 20 | Baseten | 88.11 | 86.8 | 72.5 | 63.1 | 1 |
| 21 | Kraken | 87.98 | 78.0 | 84.7 | 68.0 | 19 |
| 22 | Span | 87.61 | 90.5 | 65.9 | 60.5 | |
| 23 | Upwind Security | 87.38 | 90.8 | 71.7 | 53.3 | 1 |
| 24 | Gopuff | 86.91 | 74.4 | 87.9 | 68.3 | 7 |
| 25 | Rogo | 86.56 | 88.5 | 66.5 | 60.2 | 1 |
| 26 | Rain | 86.45 | 81.0 | 72.3 | 69.1 | 1 |
| 27 | Deepgram | 86.44 | 80.1 | 77.5 | 65.7 | 1 |
| 28 | Zocks | 86.24 | 83.0 | 70.4 | 66.1 | |
| 29 | Claroty | 85.93 | 86.1 | 71.9 | 57.4 | 1 |
| 30 | Vercel | 85.88 | 70.6 | 86.6 | 73.6 | 3 |
| 31 | Thinking Machines Lab | 85.70 | 73.7 | 72.5 | 80.8 | |
| 32 | Ramp | 85.59 | 75.4 | 81.1 | 68.5 | 4 |
| 33 | Achieve | 85.35 | 77.8 | 75.4 | 68.5 | 1 |
| 34 | Anysphere | 85.31 | 82.1 | 69.4 | 65.8 | 3 |
| 35 | Lightyear | 85.25 | 82.3 | 72.2 | 62.4 | |
| 36 | Lambda | 85.14 | 81.0 | 71.6 | 65.2 | |
| 37 | Datarails | 85.03 | 81.2 | 75.1 | 60.9 | |
| 38 | Quince | 84.95 | 67.1 | 88.6 | 75.2 | |
| 39 | GoodLeap | 84.70 | 79.5 | 77.1 | 61.1 | |
| 40 | VoltaGrid | 84.70 | 84.9 | 64.4 | 63.0 | |
| 41 | Prime Intellect | 84.69 | 76.1 | 70.3 | 74.8 | |
| 42 | Legendary Entertainment | 84.52 | 83.7 | 71.2 | 58.1 | 1 |
| 43 | Outtake | 84.48 | 85.4 | 67.2 | 58.5 | |
| 44 | Listen Labs | 84.47 | 77.1 | 79.0 | 63.3 | |
| 45 | Groq | 84.47 | 73.7 | 79.6 | 69.4 | 2 |
| 46 | Cosmos | 84.42 | 73.2 | 81.8 | 68.0 | |
| 47 | PayJoy | 84.11 | 72.6 | 81.1 | 68.8 | 1 |
| 48 | Supabase | 84.07 | 66.4 | 86.2 | 76.0 | |
| 49 | Fal | 83.95 | 72.9 | 83.5 | 65.3 | 1 |
| 50 | Checkbox | 83.92 | 82.8 | 66.6 | 62.2 | |
| 51 | Mytra | 83.72 | 80.1 | 58.0 | 75.6 | |
| 52 | JetZero | 83.62 | 81.4 | 67.6 | 63.1 | |
| 53 | Cyera | 83.58 | 79.1 | 73.3 | 61.8 | 3 |
| 54 | Saviynt | 83.52 | 79.6 | 74.6 | 59.2 | |
| 55 | Compa | 83.46 | 81.9 | 55.7 | 73.4 | |
| 56 | Wonder | 83.42 | 72.1 | 78.6 | 70.0 | 6 |
| 57 | Upscale AI | 83.42 | 85.4 | 60.9 | 61.1 | |
| 58 | Crusoe | 83.35 | 78.8 | 71.2 | 63.6 | 3 |
| 59 | Corgi Insurance | 82.95 | 76.7 | 69.4 | 68.2 | |
| 60 | Plaid | 82.94 | 66.9 | 85.6 | 71.8 | 3 |
| 61 | Zanskar | 82.82 | 82.8 | 63.5 | 61.5 | |
| 62 | Waymo | 82.80 | 72.5 | 76.6 | 68.9 | 1 |
| 63 | Imprint | 82.62 | 75.2 | 78.0 | 61.6 | |
| 64 | Physical Intelligence | 82.44 | 77.0 | 73.9 | 61.4 | |
| 65 | Onebrief | 82.42 | 81.5 | 69.0 | 57.1 | 1 |
| 66 | Luma AI | 82.40 | 78.3 | 82.3 | 50.3 | 1 |
| 67 | Upgrade | 82.39 | 69.3 | 83.5 | 66.9 | 1 |
| 68 | CookUnity | 82.38 | 72.8 | 80.0 | 63.4 | 3 |
| 69 | Sesame | 82.36 | 70.3 | 78.9 | 69.6 | |
| 70 | Point | 82.27 | 74.0 | 73.0 | 67.7 | |
| 71 | Genesys | 82.25 | 74.5 | 75.3 | 64.3 | 26 |
| 72 | Clear Street | 82.23 | 81.3 | 67.4 | 58.6 | 3 |
| 73 | Ivo | 82.05 | 79.0 | 69.0 | 61.0 | |
| 74 | OnePay | 82.03 | 61.2 | 87.6 | 77.9 | 1 |
| 75 | CesiumAstro | 81.86 | 82.5 | 63.0 | 59.2 | 1 |
| 76 | Replit | 81.86 | 66.5 | 85.5 | 68.7 | |
| 77 | Northwood Space | 81.77 | 87.8 | 65.6 | 45.7 | |
| 78 | Substack | 81.71 | 62.0 | 90.7 | 72.0 | 4 |
| 79 | Pipe | 81.64 | 76.5 | 67.3 | 66.3 | 2 |
| 80 | Armis | 81.57 | 74.7 | 70.9 | 66.0 | 3 |
| 81 | Benepass | 81.54 | 78.5 | 70.5 | 58.8 | |
| 82 | Chaos | 81.53 | 75.7 | 68.4 | 66.3 | 1 |
| 83 | Nasdaq Private Market | 81.47 | 76.2 | 72.1 | 61.4 | |
| 84 | ShopMy | 81.46 | 65.4 | 85.4 | 69.7 | |
| 85 | Scribe | 81.45 | 66.8 | 87.2 | 65.0 | |
| 86 | Proxima | 81.43 | 77.4 | 68.9 | 62.1 | |
| 87 | Figure | 81.39 | 74.7 | 67.3 | 68.8 | |
| 88 | BrainCo | 81.32 | 81.9 | 63.1 | 58.5 | |
| 89 | Octane | 81.23 | 72.6 | 77.5 | 62.4 | |
| 90 | Hadrian | 81.19 | 79.3 | 64.0 | 62.3 | 1 |
| 91 | Harvey | 81.06 | 70.5 | 76.0 | 67.4 | 2 |
| 92 | Avride | 80.99 | 72.7 | 72.6 | 66.1 | |
| 93 | Anduril Industries | 80.98 | 71.3 | 77.2 | 64.4 | 8 |
| 94 | Ripple | 80.97 | 74.7 | 76.7 | 58.0 | 8 |
| 95 | Tulip Interfaces | 80.94 | 79.6 | 70.6 | 54.2 | 1 |
| 96 | NPR | 80.91 | 64.1 | 89.8 | 65.9 | |
| 97 | Concourse | 80.75 | 78.5 | 64.5 | 61.9 | |
| 98 | Periodic Labs | 80.72 | 69.6 | 54.8 | 89.3 | |
| 99 | Anaconda | 80.65 | 64.1 | 80.4 | 74.5 | 1 |
| 100 | Eon | 80.48 | 75.1 | 65.3 | 66.9 |
FAQs
Funding tells one story. Traffic tells another. Brand demand tells a third. We wanted a view that reflects how companies actually gain leverage in the market, not just how much money they raised.
So we built our own ranking, the tech ranking we wanted to see. The one built for those trying to understand real market traction.
By looking at these three categories together we can see who turns capital into attention, and attention into brand demand.
Companies that raise big rounds but stall in visibility fall fast. Companies with modest funding but outsized momentum have greater potential to rise quickly.
Private companies operate in a different growth phase, where momentum signals matter more than quarterly earnings. Ranking private companies allows the index to surface emerging leaders before public market pressures reshape behavior and visibility.
Some companies grow steadily without headline-grabbing funding rounds. Strong traffic growth or rising branded search can push these firms higher, reflecting meaningful adoption and awareness that funding coverage alone may overlook.
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