Welcome to the DIGITAL 100: The World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies!
In the past two months, we have evaluated hundreds of private tech companies and ranked the top 100 by value.
Our rankings are based on several metrics, including revenue, users, market opportunities, growth rates, and the perception of investors and tech gurus.
A lot has changed since we published last year's list. Since then, three of the top private tech companies—Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon—have gone public. And all of their stocks have crashed.
So we've taken that into account in the valuations on this year's list. In many cases, we've disregarded valuations stamped on recent funding rounds and instead valued companies based on their public comparables.
(And note that we're valuing common stock, not the preferred stock that private investors get when they invest in the private market. Preferred stock comes with downside protection, which makes it much more valuable than common stock.)
Click here to scroll through the Digital 100 →
About The List
We've been valuing and ranking the world's most valuable digital startups for the last 5 years. We started with 25 companies, and this list soon expanded into the SAI 50+. Now it's the Digital 100.
Initially, this was just a list of startups. But the term "startup" has gotten very gray. Is Twitter still a startup? How about Pinterest?
So this year, we've expanded our search and analysis again. We found a ton more companies that are earning a lot of money and / or growing rapidly. The result is this year’s new and improved "Digital 100" — 100 of the world's most valuable private digital tech companies from around the world. India, China, and Russia are just a few of the countries that are represented.
Notable companies not included on
last year’s list include Pinterest, the photo discovery and sharing site; Coupang, the daily deals giant of South Korea; and dozens of others.
What's New
It's been a crazy year for technology companies. Many of the top companies from last year's list have gone public. Some (most) of their stocks have gotten clobbered. A lot of young companies are receiving wild valuations that are starting to get corrected by the down market, and there's a new mentality shift in startups: users aren't everything; making money matters.
Methodology
We used the same valuation methodology as we have the last four years, which you can read about in detail here. Obviously, our valuations are only as good as the information we have, so if you think we've missed something, please feel free to comment in the post or send an email to mdickey@businessinsider.com.
The Digital 100 Top Ten:
1. Alibaba
2. Bloomberg
3. Twitter
4. 360Buy
5. Palantir
6. Dropbox
7. Square
8. MLB.com
9. SoftLayer
10. Vente-Privee
Complete Coverage
Acknowledgments
We want to thank the hundreds of readers, companies, investors, and executives who have taken time over the past few months to submit nominations and share information with us. We also thank our colleagues Marcus Moretti and Megan Dickey for performing much of the background research. The valuations were estimated by Henry Blodget, Alyson Shontell, and Nicholas Carlson. VCExperts was also helpful.
1. Alibaba Group, $40 billion
Estimated Value: $40 billion
Last Year's Rank / Valuation: N/A
Business: Alibaba is a B2B marketplace for international and domestic China trade.
Location: Hangzhou, China
More Info: About Alibaba
CEO: Jack Ma
Investors: Softbank Corp, Granite Global Ventures, Venture TDF Technology Group, Silver Lake Partners, DST Global, and others
Analysis: Yahoo recently sold half its stake in Alibaba, valuing the Chinese e-commerce giant at $40 billion. It's the largest private non-LBO financing ever for a technology company globally. In the past 12 months, Alibaba has handled $12 billion in transactions.
2. Bloomberg, $35 billion
Estimated Value: $35 billion
Last Year's Rank / Valuation: N/A
Business: Business and financial market media outlet
Location: New York, New York
More Info: About Bloomberg
CEO: Daniel Doctoroff
Investors: Unavailable
Analysis: In 2008, the company was worth an estimated $25 billion. Bloomberg's 2011 revenue was $7.6 billion, up 10.5% from 2010.
Although Bloomberg is comprised of many different businesses, at its core it is a media company. We give it a healthy 5X multiple on 2011 revenue for a valuation for $35 billion.
3. Twitter, $5.25 billion
Estimated Value: $5.25 billion
Last Year's Rank / Valuation: #5 / $8 billion
Business: Messaging, microblogging and social networking service
Location: San Francisco, CA
More Info: About Twitter
CEO: Dick Costolo
Investors: Last summer, Twitter raised $800 million in two rounds: one from existing Twitter shareholders and one led by DST, both at an estimated $400 million valuation. Other investors include Charles River Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Naval Ravikant, Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, Bezos Expeditions, Spark Capital, Digital Garage, Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss, Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, and Morgan Stanley (nice IPO leverage).
Analysis: Twitter has been growing very quickly both in terms of users and revenue. Its revenue for 2011 was $139.5 million and it's expected to generate about $350 million this year. Twitter has said it expects its revenue to jump to $1 billion in 2014.
While its valuation has been as high as $10 billion, we're living in a post-Facebook world. We give it a 15X multiple on revenue for a $5.25 billion valuation.
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