Databricks, Snyk, Druva Among Top Cloud 100 Private Companies

This article originally appeared on Channel Futures.

Valuations for the world's 10 top privately held cloud companies have risen 42% year over year since 2016, according to the latest Cloud 100 Benchmarks Report. And AI vendors are starting to dominate the list.

In fact, the average valuation of those top 10 providers alone now totals $29.9 billion, according to findings in the ninth Cloud 100 list from Bessemer Venture Partners, Forbes and Salesforce Ventures. Plus, combined, the top 10 companies represent $299 billion of equity value.

Curious which privately held names claimed the 10 top spots on the Cloud 100? They're below. And even though not all are channel-centric, they're likely to have, to some degree, impacted partners' businesses in the past year:

Notably, the first four Cloud 100 companies are the same as last year's results.

AI Dominates 2024 Cloud 100

At the same time, the presence of several AI firms on the Cloud 100's top 10 list comes as little surprise. Demand for generative AI has fueled these providers' valuations and revenue since the trend kicked off in earnest in early 2023. Overall, AI claimed $176 billion of aggregate value on the Cloud 100 report. Because of that, AI overtook design, collaboration and productivity as the most valuable Cloud 100 category.

Related:Cross-Cloud: The Next Evolution in Cloud Computing?

"AI's influence on the top 10 list cannot be ignored — not only are there two foundation model companies that rose to the top 10 within the past two years (Open AI and Anthropic), but also there are two data infrastructure companies that have experienced significant AI-fueled growth in their own businesses, which also resulted in notable financing rounds in the past year (Databricks raised at a $43 billion valuation in September 2023, and Scale AI raised at $13.8 billion in May 2024, nearly doubling its valuation)," they wrote in a summary of the Cloud 100 report.

Anthropic, which teams with Google and provisions the AI assistant dubbed Claude, represented the largest mover on the 2024 Cloud 100.

In terms of that "aggregate value" classification, fintech follows AI as the most valuable. It's pinned at $173 billion.

Of further interest is that this year's Cloud 100 list value surged by 25%, according to the researchers, and has reached a record height of $820 billion — with AI driving that growth.

"Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and more are ramping revenue at rates never seen before in historical cloud software companies, and investors are rewarding this meteoric growth with mega rounds at multibillion-dollar valuations," 2024 Cloud 100 authors wrote.

Related:Big 3 Cloud Providers Eye Future Growth Beyond AI as Cloud Adoption Surges

As for which buyers are propelling AI demand, it's not just consumers. As partners are well aware, enterprises are to thank for the adoption, too. They're seeking the efficiency, innovation and competitive edges the technology inherently promises.

"AI companies are leveraging strategic partnerships with cloud providers to accelerate their reach, providing access to vast computational resources and cloud infrastructure," per the Cloud 100 report. "This hypergrowth is occurring at all layers of the new AI technology stack, from infrastructure to applications, across both B2B and B2C segments, as they redefine how we interact with software."

The 'Most Competitive' Cloud 100 List

On the whole, this year's Cloud 100 cohort "was the most competitive to date," Bessemer Ventures, Forbes and Salesforce Ventures noted. That's because more companies are opting to remain privately held for longer "while demonstrating the ability to sustain growth at scale."

To that point, the IPO environment remains "far less active" compared to prior years, Cloud 100 authors noted. Klaviyo and Rubrik are the only two companies from last year's list to have gone public. However, according to industry rumor, Cato Networks and Vast Data, both of which run channel programs, and Coreweave, which partners with Datadog and other vendors, aren't far behind. They're said to be prepping their Wall Street debuts as we speak. Meanwhile, Bessemer Ventures, Forbes and Salesforce Ventures experts expect more IPOs in 2025.

Other channel-friendly companies that made the Cloud 100 list include: