Top Tech Companies in Chicago, IL (7,768)

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue is rising at a sustained double‑digit pace across multiple periods, and management increased its constant‑currency growth outlook for 2026 after a strong first half. The company is also described as growing faster than the broader payments market by deepening share of wallet with major global merchants.

Profitability: Operating performance remains robust, with EBITDA expanding faster than revenue in 2025 and margins staying very high into 2026. This points to meaningful operating leverage alongside continued scale.

Product Line Growth: Expansion beyond core online payments is evident, with Unified Commerce and Platforms showing rapid gains and newer areas such as issuing, intelligent money movement, and agentic payments ramping. Recent acquisitions (e.g., loyalty and usage‑based billing) further broaden capabilities and potential revenue streams.

Strong Revenue Growth: Inclusion on the Inc. 5000 across many consecutive years, alongside Inc.’s 2026 profile highlighting multi‑year expansion, indicates sustained top‑line momentum. Regional recognitions and observed headcount growth further align with a scaling business.

Customer Loyalty & Retention: Average customer tenure is reported at over eight years, indicating durable relationships and product stickiness. Deepening enterprise deployments at large advisor networks further suggest sustained usage over time.

Innovation-Driven Growth: Recent AI-driven workflow tools, expanded datasets such as private market benchmarks, and a 2026 analytics acquisition point to an active product roadmap fueling expansion. Integrations with planning platforms extend utility across advisor workflows.

Product Line Growth: Product scope has widened beyond core clearing/custody, with launches such as Apex Ascend (real-time, cloud-native infrastructure), Apex Alts, and new capabilities like AI tools, prediction markets, and direct indexing, plus acquisitions including FinTron and AdvisorArch. These additions indicate a broader platform designed to serve more wealth-tech workflows and asset types.

Strategic Partnerships: Recent announcements highlight collaborations with major platforms and institutions, including Cash App Investing selecting Apex as a strategic clearing platform, Gemini choosing Apex for U.S. stock-trading custody/clearing, and integrations/alliances with Plaid, Google Cloud, and State Street. These relationships point to expanding distribution and external validation of the offering.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Operating scale is substantial, with company-reported figures of hundreds of billions in assets under custody, tens of millions of accounts, and hundreds of millions of annual trades, alongside support for 200+ platforms. High-profile platform selections reinforce a durable position in digital investing infrastructure.

Strong Revenue Growth: Financial statements indicate total revenue rose from $499.7M in 2024 to $737.5M in 2025, with clearing‑fee revenue increasing materially over the same period. Operating data into 2026 shows elevated activity levels, consistent with continued top‑line momentum.

Profitability: Net income increased from $70.2M in 2024 to $190.7M in 2025, and operating income shifted from losses in prior years to a positive result. This reflects improved earnings alongside higher clearing volumes.

Resilient & Sustainable Growth: Contracts cleared reached record levels in 2025 and continued to expand into 2026, while the securities‑lending program also grew in value and transactions. Multi‑year trends from 2020 to 2025 show options activity more than doubling, indicating durable expansion.

Strong Revenue Growth: Consolidated revenue has increased across recent years, with additional year-over-year gains extending into early 2026. This pattern indicates ongoing top-line expansion even as quarterly and annual growth rates vary.

Profitability: Operating income reached new highs in 2025 and continued to rise in subsequent quarters. This points to improving operating leverage alongside revenue growth.

Product Line Growth: Businesses such as Morningstar Credit, PitchBook, Retirement, and the Direct Platform are cited as key growth engines, with Credit standing out. This breadth of product contributions supports expansion beyond a single offering.

Market Expansion: International expansion into Europe and the appointment of a GM of International signal active scaling of geographic reach. Company communications explicitly note plans to broaden across the EU.

Product Line Growth: New offerings such as NinjaTrader Connect (B2B brokerage infrastructure), an AI-focused Innovation Lab, and access to CME Group Single Stock Futures indicate continued broadening of the product portfolio. These moves extend the business beyond a single retail platform toward infrastructure and advanced tooling.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: A $1.5B acquisition by Kraken and integration under Payward/Kraken provide significant corporate backing and resources. Independent reporting corroborated the transaction and the platform’s scale at the time.

Profitability: Square gross profit increased year over year in 2025 and again in recent quarters, with gains driven by processing, software, and financial solutions like Square Loans. Filings indicate this momentum continued into 2026, with growth excluding hardware also improving.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Square is described as a leader in small-business POS and commerce, serving millions of sellers and processing a very large volume of payments. Industry recognition and scale suggest durable competitive positioning in its core segments.

Market Expansion: International payment volume is growing faster than the U.S., and sectors such as food and beverage led recent gains. Seller acquisition accelerated late in 2025, indicating widening reach across geographies and customer segments.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue is described as reaching a record level in Q4 FY2026, with continued ARR growth and earlier double‑digit bookings gains indicating ongoing top‑line momentum.

Customer Loyalty & Retention: Renewals and expansions are emphasized, with more than 1,300 organizations renewing or expanding in FY2026. This points to durable engagement within the installed base.

Innovation-Driven Growth: Product advances such as AI agents and new applications, alongside acquisitions like Rossum and Tonkean, are expanding the platform’s capabilities. These moves are linked to increased adoption and expansion activity.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Investors and lenders have provided substantial capital to fund expansion, including a 2025 $1.6B package (~$500M Series D plus a $1.1B term loan) at an approximately $5B valuation. Earlier financings tied to the SP+ transaction added further resources to scale.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Following the SP+ acquisition, the company is described as the largest parking operator/network in North America, with 4,000–4,600+ locations and more than $5B in annual transactions. External recognition such as CNBC Disruptor 50 and TIME100 listings reinforces its prominence in the category.

Market Expansion: The footprint and membership base have accelerated from roughly 600 facilities and 1M+ members in 2022 to 4,500+ locations and 20M–30M+ members, with 1M+ new members per month at times. Expansion beyond parking into retail, hospitality, fueling, aviation, and other mobility verticals is supported by acquisitions (SP+, Oosto) and rapid post‑merger site upgrades.

Market Expansion: Offices in Chicago, Dublin, and a newly opened London location, along with growth into OTC oil trading, indicate ongoing geographic and market expansion. Company materials also describe actively inviting established traders and teams as part of entering new markets.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Hiring spans trading, quantitative research, technology, risk, and operations, supported by structured campus programs and internship pipelines. Recent openings across multiple offices (e.g., OTC Oil Desk Lead, discretionary traders, IT and data roles) point to capability build-out.

Innovation-Driven Growth: Sustained investment is described in ultra‑low‑latency systems, proprietary FPGA capabilities, high‑fidelity data, and a proprietary electronic trading platform. Recent technology hires align with a tech-led growth posture that supports revenue generation.

Strong Revenue Growth: Repeated Inc. 5000 recognition with substantial multi-year revenue gains and strong 2024 momentum indicate robust top-line expansion. Upward movement on the Inc. 5000 and external mentions reinforce accelerating revenue trajectory.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Headcount expanded from roughly the high-sixties to over one hundred during 2025, with sources noting the company crossing 100 employees and actively hiring across sales, marketing, and operations. A move to a larger 25,000-square-foot Chicago headquarters supports ongoing capacity needs.

Market Expansion: Plans for a New York City office and operations across 20+ deregulated states point to widening geographic reach. Managing 2B+ square feet of real estate and regional recognition from Crain’s suggest a broadening market footprint.

Profitability: Consolidated AEBITDA has been rising faster than revenue, supported by margin expansion and efficiencies across key segments. This points to improved operating leverage alongside growth in Gaming operations and iGaming.

Healthy Cash Flow: Adjusted free cash flow has strengthened materially in recent periods, enabling share repurchases. This pattern indicates improving cash generation that supports ongoing capital returns.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: The company is positioned among the largest competitors in core gaming-machine markets, with cross‑platform reach enhancing scale. Regulatory licensing requirements create barriers to entry that help defend its standing.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue increased year over year in 2025 and accelerated further in early 2026, with adjusted operating income also rising. This points to broad-based top-line momentum beyond a single period.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: The company is characterized as the world’s largest asset manager with record-high assets under management and leading ETF scale. This scale advantage underpins continued client inflows and platform reach.

Diversified Revenue Streams: Growth is coming from multiple engines, including iShares ETFs, active strategies, private markets, and technology services such as Aladdin, alongside newer digital-asset offerings. This breadth reduces reliance on any single product line.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Investor commitment appears strong, with a September 2025 Series B bringing total funding to nearly $50 million and described as oversubscribed by existing investors; an investor post also confirms the funding total. This indicates continued capital support for product and go-to-market expansion.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Headcount and role openings are described as expanding, with third-party trackers showing growth into the ~100-employee range by mid-2026 and active hiring across engineering, sales, marketing, and implementation. This pattern aligns with a company scaling its organization to support growth.

Market Expansion: Customer and employee footprints are said to span all four U.S. time zones, and company materials cite “hundreds of teams” using the platform and case studies from sizable carriers. The product is also being positioned across additional trucking segments within its niche.

Strong Revenue Growth: Growth accelerated from mid‑single‑digit in 2024–2025 to double‑digit in Q1–Q2 2026, with sales up around 10% reported and even higher on a daily organic constant‑currency basis. The company also raised full‑year 2026 sales guidance, signaling continued momentum.

Profitability: After softer 2025 results, operating earnings, EPS, and margins rose sharply in Q1–Q2 2026 (e.g., operating earnings up about 18–19% and diluted EPS up roughly 18–21% year over year). Management lifted adjusted EPS guidance alongside margin expansion.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: The company is described as a leading broad‑line MRO distributor with significant scale and a dual model (High‑Touch Solutions and Endless Assortment) supporting growth across segments. Industry coverage and company materials place it at or near the top of North American MRO distribution.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Access to growth capital, including a $4.5M non-dilutive facility and a later investment from RF Investment Partners, is positioned to scale product development and customer support. These financings are framed as fuel for expansion into new markets and operations.

Innovation-Driven Growth: Recent product leadership hires and stated investment in next‑generation AI and a microservices‑based architecture point to ongoing product expansion. Product scope has grown beyond eDiscovery into depositions, case building, and trial presentation.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Active hiring across client success, services, sales, marketing, product, and engineering indicates organizational expansion. Reported headcount increases into early 2025 further support a growing workforce.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue increased year over year in the latest quarters, with momentum accelerating into Q2 2026. Monetization per user improved, helping top-line growth outpace audience expansion.

Healthy Cash Flow: Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow rose sharply, and the company generated positive free cash flow in the latest quarter. These gains indicate stronger operating leverage versus a year earlier.

Diversified Revenue Streams: Subscription and other direct-revenue products such as Snapchat+ expanded rapidly alongside core advertising. “Other revenue” grew significantly and the direct-revenue run rate scaled materially.

Strong Revenue Growth: ARR is reported to have surpassed $100M in 2023 and more than $200M by January 2026, roughly doubling in about two years. Recognition such as Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (with 289% reported multi-year revenue growth) and Inc. 5000 further underscores rapid expansion.

Market Expansion: International presence has broadened across the UK, EMEA (including DACH), and Australia/New Zealand, with continued EMEA growth noted. The customer base expanded to more than 3,500 global accounting teams by 2026, up from over 1,500 in 2021.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: A $100M Series E in April 2024 at a reported $1.6B post-money valuation, corroborated by independent outlets, adds meaningful financial capacity. This funding is positioned to support scaling across product and international markets.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue has increased for multiple consecutive years, surpassing $3.0B in 2025 with continued growth into early 2026, including positive organic gains across all major segments. Filings indicate the trajectory is broad-based rather than acquisition-driven.

Profitability: Profitability is expanding faster than sales, with strong adjusted EBITDA growth and notable margin improvement in 2025. Subsequent quarterly updates show further gains, reinforcing operating leverage.

Healthy Cash Flow: Operating cash flow increased to roughly $600M in 2025, with stronger free cash flow supporting continued investment in labs and capacity expansion. This cash generation underpins ongoing growth initiatives.

Market Expansion: Leadership appointments indicate an explicit mandate to expand the core business into new products and geographies, signaling a proactive growth agenda. Independent coverage and the firm’s own materials describe this remit for a Managing Director of Strategic Business Development.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Hiring activity is ongoing across trading and engineering, and third-party sources place headcount roughly in the 120–130 range with indications of recent growth. Employer recognition alongside active requisitions suggests continued investment in talent and organizational depth.

Future-Ready Strategy: Technology statements emphasize scalable infrastructure, testing/code quality, and firm‑wide standards so platforms can “grow with us,” complemented by recruitment of FPGA, infrastructure, and software roles. This orientation points to building capacity to support greater scale and adaptability.