THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE STARTUPS

BY TEDANCE • $140 BILLION

Every month, hundreds of millions of people watch viral videos on the Chinese company’s TikTok app, which uses

AI to track preferences and offer related content. It’s also made its most popular influencers, such as Addison Rae and

Charli D’Amelio, millionaires.

STRIPE • $95 BILLION

Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison launched their mobile-payments firm in San Francisco in 2011 at ages 21 and 23, respectively, having come up with the idea as students at Harvard and MIT. Customers include Peloton and Shopify.

SPACEX • $74 BILLION

Elon Musk’s space-exploration venture, SpaceX in May 2020 became the first private company to get astronauts into orbit. Now, among other projects, it’s preparing

to blast off its first civilians in late 2021.

DIDI CHUXING • $62 BILLION

Informally known as Didi, China’s ridehailing and -sharing giant has set its sights on getting more than 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2030. It also effectively kept Uber at bay in China by handing over a $6.3 billion stake in the company in 2016.

INSTACART • $39 BILLION

The pandemic transformed the grocery delivery app—which links shoppers to

more than 600 retailers including Wegmans and Eataly—into an essential, and booming, business. Its valuation more

than quadrupled in the past year.

KLARNA • $31 BILLION

The Swedish buy-now, pay-later fintech, which lets people pay in installments

for everything from Macy’s suits to Etsy gifts, processed $53 billion worth

of transactions in 2020.

EPIC GAMES • $28.7 BILLION

The video game and software developer

behind Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games with more than 250 million players. It reportedly got its name from the original version, in which players had to create forts during the day

to hide from zombies at night.

DATABRICKS • $28 BILLION RIVIAN • $27.6 BILLION

Amazon and T. Rowe Price are both investors in this Tesla rival, which expects to deliver its first battery-powered pickups,

SUVs and delivery vans later this year.

NUBANK • $25 BILLION

David Vélez moved to Brazil to help Sequoia Capital find investments. When it pulled the plug, he stayed and founded fintech Nubank, now the world’s most valuable

digital bank.