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Y Combinator
Y Combinator's Elite: High-Growth US Startups of 2023
Jul 17, 2023
We spotlight the fastest-growing US-based startups in 2023, all of whom are part of Y Combinator's portfolio and have raised more than $5m in funding—propelling them to Series A and beyond.
We see a common theme among these leading companies - they are using AI, data and robots to improve processes in specific industries.
Our analysis covers various metrics including headcount growth, founding year, monthly website visitors, and more. Let's dive in!
Fastest-Growing Industries and Categories
Based on the median quarter-over-quarter headcount growth, here are the top 10 industries and categories are
Industries
Categories
The Champions of High Growth
Then, we identified the top 3 companies by headcount growth in each of these booming categories.
Recruiting
Deel seems like an outlier with more than 100% growth in last quarter. They have acquired 3 companies (Capbase, Paygroup and Legalpad) in last one year.
Deel focuses on global HR and payroll.
Headstart uses machine learning to improve diversity and efficiency in hiring.
Landed automates the hiring process for companies in restaurant industry.
Supply Chain Management
Shipbob and EXO Freight were founded a decade ago and now seem to have figured out the path for growth after COVID-19.
ShipBob focuses on e-commerce fulfillment, and helps with inventory management to shipping.
EXO Freight connects shippers and carriers through their marketplace and helps in open deck transportation.
Productivity Tools
Epsilon3 focuses on managing complex engineering and operational procedures.
Onebrief focuses on improving planning and decision-making processes in the military.
Paragon focuses on providing a platform for developers to create and manage integrations.
All three were founded in last 4 years.
Aerospace
Recent successes of SpaceX has helped create a booming private space industry. All 3 of the top players - Inversion space, Turion space and Pyka were founded in last 5 years.
Inversion focuses on using space as a transportation layer for Earth and aims to reduce a spacecraft’s cost of returning to Earth.
Pyka focuses on developing autonomous electric aircraft.
Turion Space focuses on building a data platform for space imagery and also build satellites to collect this data.
Biotechnology
Histowiz automates histopathology for researchers. They turn tissue specimens into high-quality digital slides in just three days for easy analysis by pathologist.
Kingdom Supercultures focuses on creating natural Superculture™ ingredients for food and beverage manufacturers.
All were founded more than a decade ago.
Computer Vision
With recent advancements in AI, companies solving industry specific problems with AI seem to be winning.
Using AI, deep learning, and computer vision they are optimizing and automating processes in their respective fields: Raptor Maps in solar energy, Veryfi in document processing and data extraction, and Mashgin in retail checkout systems.
Big Data
Albedo focuses on providing detailed imagery from space, Onebrief focuses on improving planning and decision-making processes in the military, and Veryfi focuses on document processing and data extraction.
Medical
HistoWiz and Segmed focus on providing high-quality, standardized data for research and AI development.
Pair Team focuses on improving patient interaction with the healthcare system and enhancing care management. All three companies aim to improve healthcare outcomes and efficiency.
Retail
Friendshop (now Landed) focuses on improving the recruitment process for restaurants.
GoRadar uses RFID and computer vision for inventory management and autonomous checkout.
Caper (acquired by Instacart) builds AI powered carts to streamline the checkout process. All three companies aim to improve efficiency and customer service in the retail industry.
Artificial Intelligence
ScaleAI and AssemblyAI are building AI libraries and platforms for engineers.
Access the complete data 👇
Download the complete list of 356 Y Combinator funded companies included in the analysis above.
CSV has 31 columns with headcount growth metrics, firmographics and founder details.
About the data
The data seen above is from Crustdata - an AI powered data-driven market intelligence platform for private growth stage investors and sales leaders. It indexes billions of public data points on companies every week to provide an edge over the private market.
