50 New Startups To Watch (2023)
The landscape for new startups is evolving quickly.
New advancements in AI, higher technology and software startup valuations, and the shift to a digital world are impacting business growth. Higher interest rates and uncertain economic times are also causing an increase in bootstrapped startups.
We’ve rounded up 50 startups to watch in 2023.
1. Booth AI
5-year search growth: 614%
2-year search growth: 4,900%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $1.1M (Pre-Seed)
What they do: Booth AI is a virtual photoshoot as a service (VPAAS) company. They use generative AI to offer personalized product photography to e-commerce brands. Users must upload their own product photos and provide a short description of how they want their product to appear. Booth AI then generates professional photos in 4K.
2. Millionaire Track
5-year search growth: 8,000%
2-year search growth: 3,950%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: New Delhi, India
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Millionaire Track is an online Edtech platform selling online entrepreneurial and course subscriptions to users. Available course topics include digital marketing, investing, and web development.
3. Tome App
5-year search growth: 4,900%
2-year search growth: +99x
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $81M (Series B)
What they do: Tome is an AI-powered storytelling app that uses GPT-4 and generative AI integrations to create designs, pitch decks, presentations, and more from a single prompt. The company recently raised $43 million and became the fastest productivity tool to reach 1 million users (they reached this milestone in only 134 days).
4. Anthropic Ai
5-year search growth: 6,700%
2-year search growth: 6,700%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $1.3B (Venture - Series Unknown)
What they do: Anthropic is an AI-driven safety and research company and a direct competitor to OpenAI and ChatGPT. They developed Claude, a next-generation AI assistant, with the goal of making AI chatbots unbiased, safe, and helpful. The company raised another $300 million in March 2023, earning a $4.1 billion valuation.
5. ZenML
5-year search growth: 900%
2-year search growth: 400%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Munich, Germany
Funding: $2.7M (Seed)
What they do: ZenML is an open-source ML platform helping data scientists create production-ready MLOps pipelines. This allows teams to work in sync and automate the deployment of AI models with integrations.
6. Logseq
5-year search growth: 5,700%
2-year search growth: 1,060%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $4.1M (Seed)
What they do: Logseq is an open-source knowledge management tool that focuses on privacy and user control. The company has secured $4.1 million in seed funding from big-name investors like Stripe, Shopify, and Quora to disrupt the note-taking app space.
7. Writesonic
5-year search growth: 9,600%
2-year search growth: 4,750%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $2.6M (Seed)
What they do: Writesonic is an AI-powered writing assistant. Users can automatically create articles, social media posts, product descriptions, etc., in just a few clicks. The content automation platform has also launched ChatSonic to compete with competitors like ChatGPT.
8. Beehiiv
5-year search growth: 6,100%
2-year search growth: 1,966%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $4.2M (Seed)
What they do: Beehiiv is a new email newsletter platform for creators and publications to monetize their audiences. The newsletters and emails are more customizable for creators and they also charge no creator revenue fees.
9. Instantly AI
5-year search growth: 300%
2-year search growth: 700%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Estonia
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Instantly AI is a cold email outreach software that saves sales teams money. Instead of paying per email account, users get unlimited mailboxes and unlimited email account users for one monthly subscription. They grew from $0 to $2.4 million in ARR in 12 months.
10. StellarFi
5-year search growth: 3,400%
2-year search growth: 3,400%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $22.2M (Series A)
What they do: StellarFi is an online credit repair platform that helps users increase their credit scores by reporting bill payments to major credit bureaus. In March 2023, the fintech startup secured a $15 million Series A round
11. Qdrant
5-year search growth: 4,000%
2-year search growth: 4,000%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Berlin, Germany
Funding: $9.7M (Seed)
What they do: Qdrant is an open-source Vector Search Engine. These databases store unstructured data, images, videos, and text to extend the use cases of LLMs in the future. In hopes of helping AI developers deal with unstructured data, the startup raised $7.5 million in seed funding.
12. EtherMail
5-year search growth: 5,800%
2-year search growth: 5,800%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Funding: $7.3M (Seed)
What they do: EtherMail is a Web3 email marketing platform that allows anonymous and encrypted P2P communication. Their goal is to eliminate phishing attacks, spam, and privacy concerns that exist with traditional email. Companies can also send promotional and informational emails directly to Web3 users.
13. Spendflo
5-year search growth: 2,500%
2-year search growth: 2,500%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $15.4M (Series A)
What they do: Spendflo is a procurement and management platform to help businesses manage their SaaS contracts, spending, and security in one place. This all-in-one platform to buy, manage and secure SaaS raised $11 million in Series A funding in April 2023.
14. Fliki
5-year search growth: 6,100%
2-year search growth: 6,100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Wilmington, Delaware
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Fliki is a generative AI Text to Speech & Text to Video converter. Users can import scripts, podcasts, and blog posts and create audio and video content at scale with realistic AI voices. Fliki has scaled to over 700,000 users since its launch in 2022.
15. Elm & Rye
5-year search growth: 200%
2-year search growth: 200%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: United States
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Elm & Rye is a men's modern supplement brand. All of their products are made with sustainably sourced ingredients. They cater to specific nutrient and lifestyle needs like sleep, gut health, testosterone support, and cognitive health.
16. Perplexity AI
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $28.7M (Series A)
What they do: Perplexity AI is an AI chatbot search engine. The conversational search engine aims to be more reliable and accurate than competitors like ChatGPT by displaying information sources with each search query. They recently launched an IOS app and hope to improve the knowledge database with April’s $26 million Series A funding round
17. Taplio
5-year search growth: 2,600%
2-year search growth: 2,600%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2022
Location: Paris, France
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Taplio is a LinkedIn growth tool that helps users schedule and manage their content. Taplio enables users to build their personal brand on LinkedIn with AI-generated content inspiration, post scheduling, outreach automation, and advanced platform analytics.
18. Genie AI
5-year search growth: 3,450%
2-year search growth: 7,000%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2023
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Funding: $2M (Seed)
What they do: Genie is a growing AI-powered chatbot app. Genie has multiple chatbots in beta like Alia, Alim, and Albis that perform various tasks like matchmaking and business assistance. Over 158 AI Chatbot apps like Genie AI have gone to market since the start of 2023.
19. Interior AI
5-year search growth: 4,900%
2-year search growth: 4,900%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Thailand
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Interior AI is a new interior design startup that turns 2D images into AI-designed rooms using pre-selected templates. Users can use this new app to redesign their homes and generate original interior design ideas that fit their current room layout.
20. Soundful
5-year search growth: 4,100%
2-year search growth: 4,100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Diego, California
Funding: $3.8M (Seed)
What they do: Soundful is an AI startup that aims to revolutionize music creation. Their platform allows users to produce studio-quality tracks, making it accessible for content creators and musical artists. In 2022, they raised $3.8 million in seed funding from investors like Disney, Microsoft, and Universal Music.
21. Starryai
5-year search growth: 4,700%
2-year search growth: 4,700%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: New York, New York
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Starryai is an AI art generator app. The startup has created two AI models, Altair & Orion, to generate artwork and images for users with a simple text prompt. The app is available on iOS and Android.
22. YoDayo
5-year search growth: 2,266%
2-year search growth: 1,320%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: New York, New York
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: YoDayo is an AI art platform catering to vTubers and anime fans. This startup enables users to generate and share artistic creations with fellow creators. The small but growing community can create anime art using customizable prompts instantly.
23. LayerZero
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Funding: $293.3M (Series B)
What they do: LayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol that enables communication between different blockchains. This unicorn startup aims to integrate smart contracts across all blockchain networks. Their valuation has tripled to $3 billion over the past year after recently raising a $120 million Series B round in April 2023.
24. Method Financial
5-year search growth: 148%
2-year search growth: 48%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $18.5M (Series A)
What they do: Method Financial is a debt repayment API. Fintech developers can use Method Financial to embed debt retrieval into their apps. This startup can also track transactions, store data, and handle lending and compliance.
25. Adept AI
5-year search growth: 5,400%
2-year search growth: 5,400%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $415.1M (Series B)
What they do: Adept AI is a generative AI and machine learning startup. The company is building ACT-1, a large-scale transformer that can perform advanced tasks like operating a web browser. This tool is being trained to use software, digital tools, APIs, and web apps.
26. Topmate
5-year search growth: 425%
2-year search growth: 100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Funding: $750K (Seed)
What they do: Topmate allows creators, influencers, and professionals to manage and monetize their services. The company simplifies audience building, consulting, and payments for individuals. The platform allows creators to streamline their business with integrations too.
27. Feedhive
5-year search growth: 1,000%
2-year search growth: 450%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Feedhive is an AI-powered social media marketing tool allowing users to create content at scale. Features include social media post schedule, social inbox management, AI content creation, and advanced analytics.
28. Supertails
5-year search growth: 9,700%
2-year search growth: 9,700%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Funding: $13.4M (Series A)
What they do: Supertails is a pet-tech startup that sells quality pet supplies and offers online veterinarian consultations and pet behavioral training. The digital telehealth startup employs experienced in-house veterinarians for on-demand consultations.
29. RenQ Finance
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2023
Location: Mahé, Beau Vallon, Seychelles
Funding: $7M (Pre-seed & pre-sale)
What they do: RenQ Finance is a decentralized finance Ethereum blockchain platform. This liquidity agreement operator allows users to access liquidity across multiple blockchain networks. The RENQ token exists for platform governance, staking, and liquidity.
30. LangChain
5-year search growth: 7600%
2-year search growth: 7600%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2023
Location: Singapore, Singapore
Funding: $30M (Seed)
What they do: LangChain is a Python framework for developing LLMs. The startup connects developers with the tools to create agents and prompts for better LLM memory and context. Only a week after receiving seed funding, Sequoia led another round that valued LangChain at $200 million.
31. Copymatic AI
5-year search growth: 4,500%
2-year search growth: 4,500%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Copymatic is a new AI copywriter and chatbot tool that instantly creates written and visual content. The startup provides writers with 48 tools to generate content automatically. The Copymatic Chrome Extension streamlines writing and allows users to create new text anywhere on the web.
32. Pawfy
5-year search growth: 5,100%
2-year search growth: 766%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Pawfy is a pet wellness and supplement startup. The best-selling probiotic chews improve gut health and help pets with allergies and digestive issues. Pawfy gives back and donates a portion of its profits to no-kill animal shelters across the United States.
33. ToolJet
5-year search growth: 3,300%
2-year search growth: 3,300%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $6.2M (Seed)
What they do: ToolJet is an open-source low-code platform that allows companies to build international applications. The startup secured $4.6 million in Pre-Series A funding in February 2023 to expand operations and improve product development.
34. Luma AI
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Palo Alto, California
Funding: $28.1M (Series A)
What they do: Luma AI is an app that captures 3D images using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF). The startup aims to allow everyone to experience lifelike 3D from their phones. They hope to allow users to create 3D models for $1 per model in under 30 minutes.
35. Polycam
5-year search growth: 842%
2-year search growth: 500%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Altadena, California
Funding: $2M (Seed)
What they do: Polycam is a 3D scanning app available on iOS, web, and Android devices. Polyworld is their database of available models. Users can search for anything using text and upgrade to Pro to export photo captures.
36. Statsig
5-year search growth: 2,000%
2-year search growth: 2,000%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Funding: $53.4M (Series B)
What they do: Statsig is a product experimentation startup that allows businesses to perform A/B testing at scale. The company also provides advanced analysis features so companies can generate reports and make decisions based on accurate analytics.
37. Carelon
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Carelon is a healthcare startup delivering affordable healthcare experiences to customers. Carelon Digital Platforms is a new tool that delivers virtual care access and wellness programs using an AI-first approach.
38. Meltano
5-year search growth: 2,900%
2-year search growth: 900%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California,
Funding: $12.4M (Seed)
What they do: Meltano is an open-source data integration startup making it easy for large organizations to use different tools. Meltano is a GitLab spin-off focused on creating the most reliable DataOps service.
39. Photoprism
5-year search growth: 3,800%
2-year search growth: 290%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Berlin, Germany
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: PhotoPrism is a free open-source AI-powered photo application. This photo organizer allows users to search for photos and videos, use facial recognition, and automate the classification of pictures.
40. Gevi
5-year search growth: 261%
2-year search growth: 88%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Pontedera, Toscana, Italy
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: GEVI is a startup that builds wind turbines using artificial intelligence. These turbines maximize clean energy production and GEVI hopes to replace fossil fuels in the future.
41. Midjourney
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Midjourney is an AI-powered artwork generator. The platform was built to help artists develop rapid prototypes of artistic concepts. The AI image generator grew to 1 million users in under one year.
42. Typedream
5-year search growth: 1,550%
2-year search growth: 3,200%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $500K (Seed)
What they do: Typedream is a no-code website builder with built-in defaults to create beautiful website designs. The Y Combinator startup empowers creators with no technical experience to quickly launch websites, blogs, and digital products.
43. OddsJam
5-year search growth: 3,300%
2-year search growth: 2,166%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Falls Church, Virginia
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Oddsjam is a sports betting startup that provides users with real-time data from online sportsbooks around the world. The value and arbitrage betting software helps bettors identify the best odds while line shopping.
44. Anyfans
5-year search growth: 1,200%
2-year search growth: 1,200%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Lake Havasu City, Arizona
Funding: $6M (Seed & Crowdfunding)
What they do: Anyfans is a new social media startup allowing creators to interact with one another. Content is shown to users in themed Hangout Rooms, so users can decide what type of content they see.
45. AdCreative AI
5-year search growth: 2,500%
2-year search growth: 2,500%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Paris, France
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: AdCreative.ai is an AI machine learning startup that can generate conversion-focused ad creatives instantly. It's a new Canva competitor being used to create personalized ad copy and design ideas by marketers on a budget. AdCreative.ai partnered with Getty Images in 2022 to give advertisers access to premium stock images for banner ads.
46. GoSats
5-year search growth: 1,400%
2-year search growth: 1,400%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Bengaluru, India
Funding: $4.8M (Pre-Series A)
What they do: GoSats is a Bitcoin rewards startup. They have created India's first prepaid card that rewards users with free Satoshis as cashback when they use it to make online purchases.
47. Fansly
5-year search growth: +99X
2-year search growth: +99X
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Fansly is a free and subscription-based platform for adult content. This fansite platform is an OnlyFans alternative, but Fansly allows creators to offer multiple subscription tiers.
48. BrightDrop
5-year search growth: 5,600%
2-year search growth: 714%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Funding: $800M (Seed)
What they do: BrightDrop is a commercial delivery and logistics startup. The company develops all-electric delivery vans and they've developed a cloud-based software platform to monitor vehicles and battery levels and optimize routing and logistics. BrightDrop is on pace to reach $1 billion in revenue in 2023.
49. Jasper AI
5-year search growth: 8,500%
2-year search growth: 8,500%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $131M (Series A)
What they do: Jasper is a generative AI copywriting platform. Users can create blogs, emails, ads, and other content types 5x faster than any human writing can. Jasper Chat is a newly-launched feature to compete with ChatGPT that allows users to have human-like conversations with the platform to create content.
50. Photo Ai
5-year search growth: 2,666%
2-year search growth: 1,283%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Thailand
Funding: Bootstrapped
What they do: Photo AI is a photographer and synthetic photo studio. The platform uses machine learning to enhance images, including color correction, noise reduction, sharpening, and compression optimization. Photo AI wants to make it faster and cheaper to get professional photos taken.
Conclusion
That concludes our list of the top startups in 2023.
The growing trend to watch in tech is the increased focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and large language models (LLMs). It’s changing the way we create content.
Despite the economic environment concerns, plenty of new startups are receiving funding in this space. We expect this trend to continue as technology startups continue to innovate.