We’ve been investing in enterprise tech startups for over a decade and during that time we’ve also been tracking the local NYC enterprise ecosystem’s growth through a series of Enterprise Tech in NYC Funding Reports.
See our State of Enterprise Tech in NYC: 2023 Funding Report here.
After experiencing colossal growth in 2021 and a major reset in 2022, NYC enterprise funding activity continued its decline in 2023. However, we expect 2023 to be the low point with 2024 resuming annual growth across deal count, fundraising volume, and exit activity.
A few highlights of our findings for NYC enterprise software startups in 2023:
- Most successful round: Seed (kept pace with 2021’s peak, outperformed broader US Pre-Seed / Seed trends and median Seed rounds increased to $4.8M, up 11.6% YoY, and when combined with Series As represented 75% of all funding activity for the year)
- Most impacted round: Series B (plummeted 73% YoY)
- Unicorn count: 47 (but only 7 companies raised up-rounds in this tough macroeconomic environment)
- Leading unicorn sector: Data / AI / ML
- M&A and IPO count: None
- Our prediction: Series Bs rebound in 2024 at more normalized pricing, and in turn Series A investors become more active and eager to fund opportunities from the large pool of Seed deals that got done in 2023.
Read our entire report for data and insights on the biggest funding rounds, unicorns leading the herd (and which actually raised an up-round!), funding trends deep dive, including total amount raised, total deal count, breakdown by stage, and median amount raised per stage.
Lastly, check out our updated NYC Enterprise Tech Index for a ranking of the largest NYC-based public and private, venture backed enterprise companies, ranked by market cap and total funding amount, respectively. Shoutout to Celonis for ranking as the #1 spot on the Top Privately-Held Companies list for the second year in a row.
New York City Enterprise Tech Index
Explore Work-Bench's ranking of the largest public and fast-growth enterprise companies in New York City.
Top Public Companies
| # Rank | Company Name | Sector | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Cloud Native / Dev Tools | Cloud Monitoring as a Service | |
| 02 | Cloud Native / Dev Tools | Open-source NoSQL database | |
| 03 | Data / AI / Machine Learning | Robotic process automation software | |
| 04 | Sales / Marketing | Cloud-based customer engagement software | |
| 05 | Risk / Security | Data security and threat detection | |
| 06 | Sales / Marketing | Customer experience management | |
| 07 | Cloud Native / Dev Tools | Developer cloud and infrastructure software | |
| 08 | Data / AI / Machine Learning | AI search platform | |
| 09 | Data / AI / Machine Learning | Website traffic analytics provider | |
| 10 | Sales / Marketing | Conversational cloud platform | |
| 11 | Collaboration / Productivity | Cloud video platform |
Market caps as of January 31, 2023
Top Privately-Held Companies
| # Rank | Company Name | Sector | Total Raised | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Collaboration / Productivity | $2.4B | Process mining software | |
| 02 | HR / Future of Work | $1.5B | E-learning and digital training software | |
| 03 | Data / AI / Machine Learning | $1.0B | Real-time event and risk detection | |
| 04 | Sales / Marketing | $922M | Personalized mobile messaging platform | |
| 05 | Risk / Security | $900M | Secure cloud infrastructure at scale | |
| 06 | Data / AI / Machine Learning | $852M | All-in-one data science and machine learning platform | |
| 07 | HR / Future of Work | $761M | Employee payroll and payday lending provider | |
| 08 | Risk / Security | $726M | Analytics-driven cybersecurity management | |
| 09 | HR / Future of Work | $674M | HR and recruiting software | |
| 10 | Risk / Security | $649M | Digital identity verification and fraud detection |
* Work-Bench portfolio company.
If you’re an early-stage enterprise founder building in NYC — connect with us directly to chat about anything GTM or fundraising and check out our events page to stay in the loop on all things happening in the Work-Bench community.