2021 Best Tech Startups in Illinois

February 10, 2021October 24, 2022 thetechtribune

The Tech Tribune staff has compiled the very best tech startups in Illinois. In doing our research, we considered several factors including but not limited to:

Revenue potential
Leadership team
Brand/product traction
Competitive landscape

Additionally, all companies must be independent (unacquired), privately owned, at most 10 years old, and have received at least one round of funding in order to qualify.

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1. Avant

Founded: 2012

Also honored in:

“Avant is dedicated to building premier digital banking solutions for the middle class through a combination of technology, analytics and superior customer service. Since 2012, Avant has connected over one million customers to $6.5 billion in loans and to 200,000 credit cards. A high growth financial technology company, Avant has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TechCrunch, Fortune, Bloomberg, and has raised over $600 million of equity capital. Visit www.avant.com for more information.

We are always looking for talented people who can help change the lending industry.

Check our jobs out at www.avant.com/jobs.”

2. Tempus

Founded: 2015

Also honored in:

“Tempus is making precision medicine a reality by applying AI in healthcare, deriving insights from our expansive library of clinical data and molecular data. We enable physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions to deliver personalized care and targeted therapies for patients through our analytical machine learning platform that uses the power of artificial intelligence in healthcare. We also work with partners to facilitate discovery, development, and delivery of optimized therapeutic options for patients through distinctive solution sets.

Our mission is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing the healthcare industry tools that learn as we gather more data. It’s About Time.”

3. VillageMD

Founded: 2013

Also honored in:

“VillageMD is a leading provider of healthcare for organizations moving toward a primary care-led, high-value clinical model. The VillageMD solution provides the tools, technology, operations, and staffing support needed for physicians to drive the highest quality clinical results across a population. VillageMD works with physician groups, independent practice associations, and health systems to improve quality, deliver a first-rate patient experience, and lower costs in the communities they serve.”

4. Uptake Technologies

Founded: 2014

Also honored in:

“Uptake is a proven, robust predictive analytics SaaS platform delivering products that enable outcomes across industries. Uptake has integrated our unparalleled data science, machine learning and state-of-the-art security with deep industry knowledge to create market-leading solutions worldwide.

We focus on outcomes that positively impact the productivity, reliability, safety and cyber security of your business – providing the right insight to the right users at the right time.”

5. project44

Founded: 2014

Also honored in:

“project44 is the world’s leading Advanced Visibility Platform™ for shippers and logistics service providers. Global brands like Amazon, Walgreens, Bosch, ExxonMobil, and Uber Freight are among the 300 enterprise customers who trust project44 to provide them with vital shipment information for more agility, automate inefficient manual processes, and, as a result, empower their supply chain resilience.

Global supply chain organizations realize the industry’s fastest time-to-value with p44. We offer the industry’s only service level agreement (SLA) around full truckload carrier onboarding that guarantees that 90% of a shipper’s contracted truckload carriers in North America and Europe will be live within 30 days of starting implementation.”

6. Raise

Founded: 2013

Also honored in:

“Raise is the leading digital prepaid and retail payments platform for consumers to save money and earn rewards on every purchase. As a digital partner to more than 450 retailers, Raise offers an innovative solution for brands to increase loyalty, engagement, and retention by adding value for their core customers.

Since 2013, Raise has saved millions of consumers more than $150 million and has received $147 million in funding from leading global investors including Accel, PayPal, New Enterprise Associates, and Bessemer Venture Partners.”

7. Amount.com

Founded: 2019

“Amount delivers the technology financial institutions need to create and enhance the digital consumer experience.

Built by lending industry veterans, Amount helps partners go digital in months—not years—with omnichannel retail banking experiences and a robust point-of-sale financing product suite underpinned by platform features including fraud prevention, verification, decisioning engines and account management.

Amount partners can optimize performance across product categories by tapping into various service offerings including customer acquisition, funnel and performance assessments, and risk analytics.”

8. ShipBob

Founded: 2014

Also honored in: 2019 Best Tech Startups in Illinois

“Founded in 2014, ShipBob is tech-enabled 3PL that offers simple, fast and affordable fulfillment for thousands of brands with an international fulfillment network across the US, Canada and Europe. ShipBob’s proprietary technology combines order and inventory management, warehouse management, predictive data and analytics, as well as optimized shipping for ecommerce companies. The company has raised $130.5 million in funding to date and was recently ranked number one on Crain’s Chicago ‘Fast List’ of the Fastest-Growing Companies in 2020.”

9. SpotHero

Founded: 2011

Also honored in:

“SpotHero is North America’s leading parking reservation service, with 12 million+ cars parked, the largest network of connected parking facilities, and the most app downloads nationwide. Launched in 2011, SpotHero empowers drivers with easy, affordable parking at garages, lots, and valets across 50 major cities in the U.S.”

10. Boro

Founded: 2015

Also honored in:

“Boro is a leading consumer financing platform for college students. With its proprietary underwriting system, Boro is revolutionizing the existing consumer financing industry by providing convenient and affordable financial solutions to college students, who are underserved in the current market.”