These 15 startups didn't exist 5 years ago — now they're worth billions

zoox
Tim Kentley-Klay and Jesse Levinson Zoox

Silicon Valley can create immense value in just a short time. Just look at these 15 startups that didn't even exist five years ago, which are now valued at $1 billion or more, according to venture capitalists. 

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For the purposes of this list, Business Insider asked PitchBook Data to pull a list of US-based companies that were founded in 2012 or later — since we're nearing the end of 2016 — and that are private tech companies with a valuation of north of $1 billion. 

We then ranked them from least to most valuable based on their post-money valuations.

Here are the companies that achieved billion-dollar valuations in the last five years:

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Cylance

Cylance Stuart McClure
Cylance CEO Stuart McClure YouTube/Cylance

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1 billion

Cylance built a product that uses artificial intelligence to analyze a file you're about to open, determine if it's malware, and then stop it from executing — all in less than a second. It solves the problem of email phishing scams, which are still a favorite method of hackers, and has over 1,000 customers, it says.

Cylance was founded by Stuart McClure and Ryan Permeh, two well-known names in security who are perhaps best known for their work at McAfee.

 

 

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Compass

compass cofounders
Compass

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1 billion

While Compass functions like a traditional broker, the company's promise is using technology to reduce the time and friction of buying and selling a house or apartment. In July, Compass released an app designed to replace "stale" quarterly market reports with more dynamic information. In the app, buyers and sellers can search by standard things like neighborhood, number of bedrooms, price range, and so on. But they can also look at more advanced metrics, like year-over-year analysis of median price per square foot, days on the market, and negotiability.

 

 

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Illumio

Illumio CEO Andrew Rubin
Illumio CEO Andrew Rubin Illumio

Founded: 2013

Valuation: $1 billion

In 2014, Illumio emerged from stealth. Six months later, it had already racked up a billion dollar valuation, thanks to its new approach to security.  The idea involves watching the applications themselves to make sure they aren't doing anything they are not supposed to do, indicating a hacker or a virus. It places a tiny bit of code (called an agent) on every computer and operating system to watch all the apps. Companies can then install the software that watches the apps in their own data center, or they can hire Illumio's cloud service to watch the apps for them. And then the security follows the app wherever it goes, even if an app moves from one server to another, or from the data center to a cloud computing service.

 

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Carbon3D

Carbon3D
Carbon3D

Founded: 2013

Valuation: $1 billion

Carbon3D grabbed headlines and attention for its method of seemingly creating shapes out of a liquid resin soup.  It's much more complicated than that, but Carbon3D has caught the eye of everyone from Ford to Johnson & Johnson. While Ford imagines a future of speedy customizable parts, like custom designed cup holders, healthcare operators are looking at Carbon3D for a fast way to create surgical parts. 

The machines are already being tested less than a year after they launched. In April, it released its M1 printer.

 

 

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Opendoor

Keith Rabois
Keith Rabois, chairman and cofounder of Opendoor

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $1.1 billion

Opendoor is betting that homeowners would take a guaranteed sale over a higher price. It calculates a fair market value and pays homeowners before re-selling the home with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

 

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Uptake Technologies

Brad Keywell
Getty Images/Bloomberg

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $1.1 billion

Former Groupon founder Brad Keywell started the secretive Chicago-based data analytics startup in 2014. Already it's working with Caterpillar to be the analytics backbone of heavy industries like manufacturing, construction, rail, and more. Its sensors and data analysis should be able to help companies predict revenue and save money, according to Forbes.

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Flatiron Health

Flatiron Health
Saskia Uppenkamp

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.2 billion

Flatiron Health is a software company that organizes the world’s oncology information and makes it accessible for doctors, patients, and researchers. In January 2016, Roche, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, made a $175 million investment in the company, which valued the company at $1.1 billion.

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Zoox

zoox
Tim Kentley-Klay and Jesse Levinson Zoox

Founded: 2014

Valuation: $1.55 billion

Despite remaining in stealth, Zoox has already raised $290 million for its unseen product. The only hint its founder Tim Kentley-Klay has given was at a conference in October when he described it as Disneyland on the streets:

“At Zoox what we’re creating...is not a self-driving car any more than the automobile is a horseless carriage. We’re not building a robo-taxi service, we’re actually creating an advanced mobility service,” Kentley-Klay said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “You can really think of it as Disneyland on the streets of perhaps San Francisco and that means a vehicle which is smart enough to understand its environment but it’s also importantly smart enough to understand you, where you need to be, what you want to do in the vehicle, and how you want to move around the city.”

 

 

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Instacart

instacart shoppers
Instacart

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.9 billion

Often dubbed "Uber for groceries," Instacart eliminates the need to ever set food in a grocery store. The service will deliver your full load of groceries, hand-picked by a personal shopper at local stores.

In 2016, the company deepened its relationship with Whole Foods after the grocery retailer invested in the company and signed a multi-year delivery contract.

 

 

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Oscar

oscar health founders
Oscar CEO and co-founder Mario Schlosser, co-founders Kevin Nazemi and Joshua Kushner. Oscar

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.5 billion

Oscar founder Josh Kushner wants to transform the healthcare industry by creating a better user experience when it comes to health insurance. It launched publicly in 2013 to sell better insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Yet, the election of Donald Trump could spell trouble for the highly-valued startup, even though Kushner's brother, Jared, is Trump's son-in-law. According to Bloomberg, it's still losing money as it looks to diversify away from Obamacare-only offerings — something Trump, a close family connection, seeks to repeal.

 

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Quanergy

louay eldada quanergy
Quanergy

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.6 billion

Self-driving car startups aren't the only billion-dollar bets around. Quanergy isn't building its own car, but instead specializes in building LiDAR systems — the 3D sensing systems that self-driving cars use to the see the world. Already the startup has struck partnerships with vehicle-makers including Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai.

 

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Blue Apron

Blue Apron Co Founders
Blue Apron cofounders Matt Wadiak, Matt Salzberg, and Ilia Papas Blue Apron

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $2 billion

Blue Apron, a company that sends you portioned-out ingredients and recipes in a box, is a godsend for lazy cooks.

Though it's only been around since 2012, Blue Apron has already generated more than $800 million in revenue in 2016, according to Bloomberg. However, it has put its IPO plans on hold as it works to decrease its customer acquisition costs and improve lifetime customer value, Bloomberg reported. Blue Apron's potential is vast: The service appeals to millennials who want to expand their repertoire in the kitchen, as much as to busy moms straining for creativity and simplicity in their weeknight meals.

 

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Avant

avant ceo Al Goldstein, CEO
Avant CEO Al Goldstein Avant

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $2 billion

One of two highly-valued Chicago startups, online lending company Avant targets subprime borrowers — people with lower credit scores. To date, the startup has given out more than 500,000 loans, totaling more than $3 billion.

 

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Zenefits

David Sacks
Zenefits CEO David Sacks REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $2 billion

Zenefits' valuation took a haircut in 2016. The startup, once valued at $4.5 billion, experienced turmoil after it was discovered that its CEO had created a program designed to cheat state regulations. After installing a new CEO and launching Zenefits 2.0, the company also repriced its stock, shaving its valuation from $4.5 billion to a cool $2 billion — still a lot of money for a five-year-old company.

 

 

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Pivotal Software

pivotal ceo rob mee
Pivotal CEO Rob Mee Glassdoor/Pivotal

Founded: 2013

Valuation: $2.8 billion

Pivotal sells a set of software tools and consulting services to help even the largest, most old-school companies build and develop software as if they were a tiny startup. Pivotal becomes their secret weapon as they turn to newfangled cloud computing and data-crunching technologies to stay competitive in a digital world. In May, Ford led a $253 million investment in the company alongside Microsoft. 

 

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