20 Top Tech Companies Building the Next Big Thing

Imagine what it would have been like to be one of the first-ever electricians, or have had a hand in building one of the first robots. Being among the “firsts” to touch and build new pieces of technology means putting your fingerprints all over history. 

Today, there are a whole slew of “firsts” that are likely slipping by unnoticed when it comes to tech, mostly because of the rate of change. 

According to the World Economic Forum, the pace of technological change is faster now than it ever was in the past — take for example the 66 years between humans flying and being able to land on the moon. The rate of technological progress is moving faster than ever before. When AI is thrown into the equation, change accelerates astronomically. 

Maybe 2024 will be the last summer without robots being commonplace in people’s homes. Maybe 3D-printed houses will be the popular building trend in a few years. Maybe quantum computing will find a drug that can cure cancer. 

Built In found 20 tech companies that are all pushing their technical teams to new heights. Who knows — maybe you will work on the piece of tech that makes you one of the minds behind a great “first” of this generation. 

 

Pfizer is a healthtech, biotech and pharmaceutical company. 

At the Forefront: Pfizer shared data across its infectious disease portfolio at the upcoming IDWeek 2024 congress, held in Los Angeles. “Pfizer is at the forefront of vaccine and therapeutic development in respiratory and infectious diseases,” noted Annaliesa Anderson, Ph.D., senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, in a press release. “IDWeek 2024 provides a crucial platform to showcase our innovative advancements and engage with the scientific community, as we work to effectively tackle the ongoing challenge posed by infectious diseases.”

Inside the Research: Pfizer surveyed people across the globe to understand how much trust most put in healthtech. It found that out of every 10 adults, six trust technology. The company website notes that: “Our findings underscored that patients won’t feel the full benefits of that technology if we don’t have trusted people — specifically healthcare providers — delivering it. We must partner with patients, healthcare providers, policy makers and others in the life sciences and tech industries to build trust in the technologies that are fueling the future of health.”

 

BAE Systems, Inc. is an aerospace, defense and security company. 

Helping Veterans Transition Into Tech: The defense and security company makes it a point to find skill translations between military service and job requirements. A Built In article detailing this unique overlap noted that, for most applicants, it falls on the vets to show the overlap, but BAE Systems’ SkillBridge Program helps ease that translation and transition out of service. 

Countrywide: BAE Systems has office locations across the United States, along with remote and hybrid roles. Applicants could use a welcome packet from the company as an excuse to move to Hawaii, Washington or California, to name a few. 

 

Liberty Mutual Insurance is a provider of property and casualty insurance. 

Engineering Retention: Liberty Mutual is known for creating a culture on its tech teams that encourages retention, according to the employees interviewed in this 2022 article, which reads: “When it comes to employee satisfaction, Liberty Mutual has architected a culture where engineers say they’re able to work with cutting-edge tools, are given the resources and support to master those tools, and are celebrated for their impact.” 

Understanding the Customer: The ethos of Liberty Mutual is to understand the customer first and foremost. “A tech-forward insurance company is not about automating everything and removing humans from the loop,” CIO Monica Caldas told Forbes. “It’s about understanding the customer journeys, whether it’s an individual consumer, an agent or a broker. It’s understanding the journeys, understanding where automation and digitization can help remove friction and provide a better experience, a better product and a better service.”

 

Chewy is an e-commerce, prescription service and brick-and-mortar retailer for pet products. 

STEM Roles: Between prescription services, development teams and CarePlus — a suite of insurance and wellness plans developed by the Chewy Health team — there are a myriad of STEM roles available at Chewy. 

‘Pup’ Training: Chewy offers early-career candidates opportunities for internships and more to help them get experience in the field. The company’s co-op experience combines classroom-based education with practical work experience, providing a hands-on learning opportunity to students. 

 

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that runs a cloud-native platform. 

Remote First: CrowdStrike puts a big emphasis on remote and hybrid work. Considering that the 10,000-plus person company has 24 global locations, being able to work from anywhere and stay connected is vital. Chief HR Officer J.C. Herrera told Built In San Francisco that efforts like “setting up time to catch up with no agenda, checking in on colleagues at the beginning of a Zoom meeting or sending spontaneous messages to say hello can elevate the human touch points.” 

Engineering and Tech Star Squad: If cybersecurity companies were like the U.S. military, CrowdStrike might be like the Special Forces. The level of technical response is high at CrowdStrike. The company boasts that it processes more than 2 trillion events a week and stops 35,000 breaches a year.

 

Optimum is a broadband communications video services provider. 

AI Connected: Optimum recently released Alice, an AI tool for media buying on its platform. The company’s website notes: “Think of Alice as your new campaign planner. She’s cutting-edge and ready to extend your campaign’s reach to ensure you are covering as much of your audience as possible for your dollar.”

Best Mobile Marketing Platform: Optimum Media’s AdMessenger was selected as winner of the “Best Mobile Marketing Platform” in the MarTech Breakthrough Awards. According to a press release: “Optimum Media’s AdMessenger is a fully customizable scrolling text ad for mobile devices. Running primarily on mobile web inventory and over 15,000 apps, AdMessenger allows users to go where their audience goes. From large, national campaigns to small, local issues, it is an effective tool to reach, activate and — when the time comes — mobilize voters. AdMessenger is truly a mobile solution for all campaigns, regardless of size or budget.”

 

Crusoe Energy Systems is eliminating flaring and emissions in the oil field while also reducing the cost of cloud computing for the oil industry, repurposing otherwise wasted energy to fuel the growing demand for computational power. 

Expanded Data Centers: Crusoe, Blue Owl Capital and Primary Digital Infrastructure entered a $3.4 billion joint venture to develop an AI data center. “Rapidly expanding demand for purpose-built data centers proves that markets know the future will be powered by AI,” Crusoe CEO and Co-Founder Chase Lochmiller said in a press release. “We’ve designed this data center to enable the largest clusters of GPUs in the world that will drive new breakthroughs in AI. An investment of this magnitude from a leading, trusted asset manager like Blue Owl and Primary Digital Infrastructure is a reflection of Crusoe’s proven ability to meet growing demand for AI compute, and to power these workloads sustainably.”

Revenue Growth: Crusoe came in at number 49 on the list of Inc. magazine’s 2023 Inc. 5000 report. To be considered for inclusion, companies must have booked at least $100,000 in revenue in 2019 and at least $2 million in 2022 — and, considering that Crusoe’s revenue grew 8,433 percent between 2019 and 2022, the company definitely had no trouble making the list. 

 

The PagerDuty Operations Cloud enables businesses to compress costs, accelerate productivity, sustain seamless digital experiences and more. 

Gen AI Security: PagerDuty announced that it would expand its generative AI technology, PagerDuty Advance, to assist with IT outages and cybersecurity defense. “These are contributing factors to a greater number of outages which last longer and are more costly,” said Jeffrey Hausman, chief product development officer to Silicone Angle. “Building upon our genAI offerings, PagerDuty Advance provides customers with generative AI solutions that help them scale teams by surfacing contextual insights and automating time-consuming tasks at every step of the incident lifecycle.”​​​​​

HackWeek: In late 2023, Built In reported on PagerDuty’s AI and its HackWeek tradition: “One way PagerDuty ensures they are constantly innovating for their customers is their HackWeek tradition,” the article reads. “PagerDuty’s engineering team ceases their day-to-day work and convenes a HackWeek, during which team members pitch a feature, experiment or project and solicit participation from fellow engineers and other cross-functional team members throughout the company. At the end of the week, the teams present what they’ve been working on and what they’ve learned.” 

 

Bonterra is a social good software company that enables connectivity between social good organizations and their community of supporters and constituents. 

Many Origins: Bonterra is the combination of several social good companies: CyberGrants, EveryAction, Network for Good, Social Solutions, WeSpire and their respective entities. The result is an intricate product that the tech team pieces together and transforms into a seamless platform. 

In 2022, Bonterra Chief Product Officer John Manganaro described it to Built In: “These products were all built in different ways, so our goal isn’t to rewrite all of those tools into a single piece of infrastructure. Ultimately, we want customers using our products to have as seamless an experience as possible so they can maximize their time helping people, not entering data into software. Our approach to our tech stack is to get information, solve a problem and figure out where the solution should live.”

Ethical AI: Bonterra is taking a lead in establishing AI transparency by creating an “Ethical AI Values” list. The company’s website notes: “Our understanding of AI is imperfect, but we believe industrywide transparency will help us stay accountable, constantly improve and strive for a better world together.” The nine items that Bonterra focuses on are: privacy and security, inclusiveness, accountability, explainable and interpretable explainability, legal compliance, social impact, human control of technology requirements, valid and reliable validation and use case review. 

 

Adswerve is a data, media and tech consultancy and a Google and Adobe partner that helps brands and agencies think beyond clicks and conversions to unlock new opportunities for growth.

Brand Overhaul: Adswerve recently completed a rebrand, featuring a new logo, new brand colors and the tagline “Move Fearlessly Forward.” The rebrand is an indication of the company’s status as an established, successful business, after its initial years of startup growth. Since the company was founded in 2009 and became the first U.S.-certified Google partner, it has grown to over 300 data scientists, media and analytics professionals worldwide and currently helps more than 800 brands scale the return on their investment in digital marketing.

Pillars for Advanced Tech: “Gritty,” “groundbreaking,” “genuine,” “giving” and “guide” are Adswerve’s five key pillars, which the company uses as approaches to how it launches into action around data insights. Adswerve was named a “2024 AdExchanger Awards Finalist in the Best Use of Data by an Agency” for the team’s work with Six Flags.

 

Trumid is a growing fintech company that brings leading-edge technology and product design to corporate bond trading.

Inside Engineering: In 2024, Trumid Head of Automation Engineering Paul Chered told Built in, “As a fast-growing market leading innovator with an agile technology stack, Trumid is uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends. Trumid derives this position from a persistent focus on technology and most importantly an unrelenting pursuit of serving client needs, as evidenced by the rapid client adoption of Trumid trading protocols and solutions.” 

Work in NYC: The New York City office of Trumid is in the heart of Midtown, between Bryant Park and Times Square. The company describes it as “a vibrant area surrounded by great restaurants, shopping and entertainment with the convenience of multiple public transportation options.”  

 

Alma is a healthtech company that offers access to high-quality, affordable mental health care. 

Timeout Policy: Alma takes mental health care seriously. The company website and careers page notes that if an employee experiences a traumatic event or crisis, the team will offer them therapy stipends and time off to tend to their needs. The careers page states that: “We acknowledge that injustices in the world impact wellbeing, and this policy gives our employees the power to say ‘I’m not alright’ — no questions asked.” 

Open to Learning: A part of being on the engineering team at Alma is a culture that thrives when everyone is trying new things. “A blameless culture in engineering encourages us to solve problems with less pressure and allows us to grow as engineers,” Analytics Engineer Selam M. told Built In in 2024. “I’ve always felt encouraged to ask questions and speak up if I see something that could be improved.” 

 

Zeta Global is a data-powered marketing cloud company that leverages AI and trillions of consumer signals to make it easier for marketers to acquire, grow and retain customers.

Data Powered: Zeta Global recently purchased LiveIntent for $250 million. The acquisition will bring a whole new trove of data to the AI that powers Zeta Global’s platform. “AI is going to become more and more ubiquitous. It’s going to be the data that you feed into it that’s going to be a differentiator,” David Steinberg, Zeta’s co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer told The Wall Street Journal.  

AI Potential: Seven years ago, Zeta Global restructured the tech architecture to make sure robust data sets were being built into the platform. Zeta Global’s CEO David Steinberg spoke with CNBC’s “Fast Money” about how this can make a difference for digital marketers — allowing them to use one platform instead of several. 

 

Analytics8 is a data and analytics consultancy. 

Adding in AI: Since Analytics8 added AI into the company’s sales workflow, the team has reported nothing but increased efficiency. Built In spoke with a principal consultant at the company about how AI has changed the sales team and learned about Analytics8’s private generative AI assistant that speeds up the sales review process and is boosting pipeline. 

Growing Quickly: Analytics8 is growing like crazy. The big data company has acquired Mashey, established a consulting team in Bulgaria and moved into a larger headquarters in Chicago — all within the last three years. The company is now on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing and most innovative companies. 

 

Tufin is a network security policy management company, managing and automating security changes across next-gen firewalls and network devices.

Award Winning: Tufin has a whole virtual trophy wall of awards the company received for its cybersecurity prowess. Just to name a few: G2 named Tufin a “best security product” for 2023, Tufin landed a global and top “InfoSec” award from Cyber Defense Magazine in 2023 and 2024, and the company received a Globee Cyber Security Global Excellence Award in 2022. And Tufin was recently named among Built In’s 2024 “Best Midsize Companies to Work for in Boston.” 

Global Minded: Tufin was founded in Tel Aviv and is headquartered in Boston, so time zone changes were built into its best practices from the beginning. Today, employees on Tufin’s team are scattered all across the world: North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The company’s current offices are in Tel Aviv, Boston, Akron and Gurugram. 

 

Edmunds is an automotive sales website that began publishing printed car guides in the ’60s. 

Faster Data: The product team at Edmunds created a system that dramatically shortens data updating time. Nitin Mahajan, Edmund’s assistant vice president of technology, explained the data overhaul to Built In LA in 2023. “Given the sheer volume of data and the essential need for a seamless customer experience, we’ve initiated a project aimed at achieving a tenfold improvement in our operational performance The core objective is to reduce the data updating time frame from months to days.” 

Technical Toolbox: Edmunds’ career page emphasizes that constantly learning is a big part of the dev culture, as is building architecture that is simple to “develop, maintain, replace and above all simple to explain.” The careers page notes: “We aim to avoid the pitfalls of over engineering.” 

 

Terakeet is an owned-asset optimization partner for Fortune 500 brands.

Thought Leadership: Terakeet was featured in volume 14 of the Journal of Brand Strategy in an article detailing the company’s work in reception marketing. The article is titled “Building Brand Trust and Consumer Willingness to Convert With Reception Marketing.”

Award Winning: In addition to making the list of Built In’s Top 100 List of Best Remote Midsize Places to Work, Terakeet recently won two MarCom Awards by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. 

 

MyBambu is a mobile app offering financial solutions to everyone, regardless of their immigration status.

Built for Immigrant Journeys: MyBambu COO and CMO Val Infante noted in a press release that the company goes “beyond expectations, offering not only financial services but a complete experience that transforms how the immigrant community manages their money.” The unique technical build of the platform allows immigrants to open a checking account with only an official document from the country of origin and no check on immigration status. 

Beach Office: Engineers who join the MyBambu team might work from the company’s office location in West Palm Beach, Florida. The company describes this location as: “In an area of captivating tapestry of urban sophistication, cultural richness and tropical allure. The lively Clematis Street is a hub of activity as locals and visitors come together to explore an array of shops, galleries and eateries.” 

 

Sunday is a greentech company that provides a service where customers send in a soil sample of their yard and Sunday will mail them a subscription of curated lawn treatments, all managed by data-driven insights. 

Giving Back: Sunday has a lot of community partnerships that the company is proud of. In 2023, the Boulder team collected 500 pounds of trash on Earth Day alone. In Los Angeles, 2,500 food kits were made possible by Sunday teammates. 

Cutting Down on Plastic: One big challenge for any company producing and shipping single-use items is how to  use as little plastic as possible. In 2023, Sunday reported reducing plastic use by 16 percent, which equated to nearly 500 metric tons. 

 

Nourish is a telenutrition platform that connects patients with registered dietitians through their health insurance.

Mission-Driven Tech: The product teams at Nourish get to make a big impact. The platform helps people lead healthier lives by starting at the source — food. The platform connects users with registered dieticians and helps them stay on track with diet changes. 

New York State of Mind: A fast-moving, growing and ambitious state of mind is part of the culture of the company and its New York City office. Its careers page notes values like “work smarter not harder,” “do your own stunts” and “ship fast.” Another value, “think from first principles,” states: “How you think matters more than what you think. We think like scientists — we ask why, challenge assumptions, and value the right answer over being right.”