This Year’s Top Tech Startups That Are Worth Keeping an Eye on in 2023

The United States is home to the highest number of startups today, with over 70,000 operating across multiple different industries, from artificial intelligence, life sciences, gaming, financial technology, and more. Perhaps a discouraging, but nevertheless well-known fact in this industry: 90% of all startups fail within their first year and only 10% manage to flourish into full-fledged businesses.

While competition is fierce in the startup scene, some are able to take off from the very beginning and catch the attention of powerful investors who believe enough in the company’s vision and potential to reach for their wallets. So, the question arises: which of the tech startups founded in 2022 have the highest chances of surviving their first years and ultimately bringing profit?

To pinpoint some of 2022’s top tech startups, we looked at the ones founded this year that already managed to secure significant pre-seed and seed investments. As such, we considered these startups to have gained the interest and trust of investors in a short amount of time after entering the market, and we ranked them by the funding amounts they have raised so far.

Top Tech Startups That Secured Pre-Seed Funding in 2022

During pre-seed funding, companies need to attract investors by demonstrating that their product fulfills a certain market need. Also known as the earliest stage of funding or the post-ideating funding round, pre-seed focuses on early-stage product development. It prepares the company to maximize its future fundraising potential by assembling a core team and building and testing an MVP (minimal viable product). Simply put, investors provide the necessary capital to get the startup running, in exchange for equity.

A typical pre-seed round reaches anywhere between $50,000 and $250,000; however, the following startups managed to secure much larger investments, showcasing tremendous potential:

With a massive, $5.5. million pre-seed funding, ILUMA emerged this year as a highly promising San Francisco startup, with a focus on cryptocurrency, software and WebOS. Granted, the company was founded at the very beginning of 2022 and the total funding amount came from two different pre-seed rounds. Even so, lead investor Acrew Capital along with co-investors Orange DAO and Hive Hatch seem to expect great things from this exciting new startup. ILUMA promises to create autonomous solutions to onboard, manage, support and engage Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in web3 — a new, blockchain-based iteration of the world wide web.

Co-founder and CEO Alex Fine was on a great professional path even before Fun, having built a studying app at 16 and graduating Stanford University — which consistently ranks as one of the top schools for future entrepreneurs. With a goal to leverage new blockchain technology to build cross-chained wallet infrastructure, Fun is another San Francisco-based startup that recently secured a remarkable $3.9 million in pre-seed funding from five investors in a single round. The lead investor is JAM Fund, a venture capital firm known for backing companies with vision and an ambition to disrupt.

With headquarters in Miami Beach, Airstack was founded in May 2022 and received a $3.8 million pre-seed funding in October, from a whopping total of 21 investors. This promising startup is on a mission to enable the best API connections across blockchain networks and make web3 data public, easily browsable and consumable. Similar to ILUMA, Airstack provides solutions for one of the fastest-growing segments out there, and the dynamic industry combined with the significant funding provide the ideal conditions for a steep ascension.

Libristrip’s $3.1 million pre-seed funding proves that the limited global mobility during the past few years did little to diminish the optimism around travel apps. The Libristrip app enables users to search, book, and manage their trip, as well as plan and reserve activities — all from one single platform. This New York-based startup combines AI, information technology, software and travel, and has managed to secure significant investment from a single pre-seed round in April of 2022 – a definitive sign that versatile travel technology is, and will continue to be a priority for the post-pandemic tourist.

Another NYC tech startup rounds out the top 5 — Kalder received $3 million in pre-seed funding the same year it entered the market. The funding amount was brought forth in mid-September by 10 investors: Paribu Ventures, Human Capital, 8VC, 500 Global, Indigo Fund, Soma Capital, Accel, Arda Kutsal, Meltem Demirors and Alyssa Fanelli. Kalder is a web3 platform that is set to help brands drive engagement, onboard new users and reward loyal ones. With the product itself still in the pipeline, in this initial phase Kalder is building a waitlist for those waiting to be early adopters. However, the generous seed investment from a diverse investor pool signals optimism and trust that the company is on the right track for speedy growth and future success.

Top Tech Startups That Secured Seed Funding in 2022

As opposed to the pre-seed stage, companies in the seed funding stage are expected to have proven product viability, a validated value proposition, as well as a certain degree of traction on the market. Seed funding is the first official round of formal investing that follows pre-seed funding but precedes funding series A, B and C.

Most startups secure seed funding around the $2 million mark, but the investments on our top-five list are in an entirely different league:

Having scored the most sizeable amount in seed funding, from a single round in Q1 2022, Trust Machines is a tech startup focused on bitcoin and blockchain – some of the most promising and influential industries of the 21st century so far. The whopping $150 million gained through seed funding was provided by seven investors, with Hivemind and Breyer Capital as the lead ones. Trust Machine’s vision to build the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin applications, while also contributing to the growth of the Bitcoin economy, presents great potential and seems to have gained a significant amount of trust among business investors in a short period of time.

Another New York-based startup, Ascertain received $100 million in one round of seed funding this year. At its core, Ascertain is a union between startup creation company Aegis Ventures and New York-based healthcare provider Northwell Health. Operating in the medical, tech and data segments, the company provides a one-of-a-kind solution for the healthcare system’s most pressing quality, equity and cost problems. Their main focus is to help launch AI-based health technology companies that would ultimately improve the quality of care and make it more accessible to the public.

Yet another startup on a mission to improve the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industries, Co:Create is based in California. The company received $25 million in seed funding in October from seven private investors, led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. What’s unique about Co:Create is that the company focuses on helping web3 brands and communities to develop and leverage native tokens — simply put, create better ways for companies to engage and reward their communities through customizable and secure tokens for loyal customers.

Cryptocurrency and fintech startup CreatorDAO managed to secure an impressive $20 million from two rounds of seed funding, among a total of 28 investors. Like Co:Create, CreatorDAO also calls California home. One of the two lead investors, a16z crypto — a subsidiary of the same Andreessen Horowitz that’s behind the Co:Create seed funding — is a well-known venture capital fund on the crypto and web3 market, with a total of $7.6 billion in funds raised so far. CreatorDAO’s ultimate goal is to empower content creators, enable them to learn from experts and further their careers. Established creators like Paris Hilton and The Chainsmokers are already backing up this promising startup’s growth.

Similar to CreatorDAO, Ethernal Labs is another LA-based tech startup leveraging web3 technology that secured $20 million in seed funding this October. The sum brought forth by six investors — Morningstar Ventures, Thomas Vu, Eric Schmidt, Michael G. Rubin, Polygon Studios and BlackEdge Capital — is meant to support the blockchain, Ethereum and 3D technology startup in its future expansion. Ethernal Labs is even dipping its toes into the metaverse, one of the most hyped-up concepts of the last years.

With seven of the ten startups in our ranking operating in the blockchain industry, it’s interesting to see what their new trajectory will be like in 2023. Given crypto’s significant downfall in 2022, it remains to be seen whether the sector will recover and how that will affect the overall performance and success of both tech startups and larger, established companies.