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

Healthy Cash Flow: Operating cash flow increased from $27.7 billion in 2024 to $33.6 billion in 2025, and Q2 2026 free cash flow was $4.6 billion, up 2.3% year over year. This indicates strong cash generation despite uneven top-line trends.

Diversified Revenue Streams: Connectivity revenue rose 4.2% to $46.0 billion in 2025 alongside growth in business services (to $10.2 billion), wireless lines (to 9.3 million), Peacock (revenue up 10% to $5.4 billion; paid subs up 22% to 44 million), and parks. Comcast also highlights six growth drivers—broadband, wireless, business services, studios, streaming, and parks—that represented about 60% of 2025 revenue.

Product Line Growth: Wireless and streaming scaled meaningfully, with approximately 1.5 million wireless line additions in 2025 and Peacock reaching 44 million paid subscribers that year and achieving first-time quarterly profitability in Q2 2026. Business services connectivity also expanded in 2026, including Q2 revenue up 3.7% and EBITDA up 5.0%.

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 Hiring & Retention: Hiring is active and broad-based across trading, technology, and operations, including roles such as Electronic Options Trader, Trading Operations Associate, and high-frequency futures/quant positions. The firm is also recruiting for future starts (e.g., a C++ role targeting 2026 graduates for 2027), indicating continued investment in capacity.

Diversified Revenue Streams: Operations span proprietary trading, execution services, asset management, and technology, providing multiple business lines beyond pure market making. The trading group participates across equities, equity/index options, futures, ETFs, bonds, and related derivatives.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: The company is described as a leading liquidity provider in exchange-listed equity derivatives and is regularly grouped with established options market makers. A multi-office footprint in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and London underpins this presence.

Strong Hiring & Retention: Hiring and headcount are expanding, with disclosures of 15,000+ global employees, thousands of new hires, and third‑party estimates indicating continued workforce growth. Available evidence also points to active internal mobility and a recent increase in active job postings.

Market Expansion: Geographic and client footprints are broadening, with 40+ offices and 1,700+ customers across 170+ countries alongside concrete investments in new and expanded locations such as Hyderabad and Kingston. These moves indicate scaling delivery capacity in major capability centers and new regions.

Innovation-Driven Growth: The offering mix is shifting toward AI, data, technology, and platforms, including proprietary solutions and product capabilities. Strategic moves such as Salesforce-focused acquisitions and collaborations, plus a Tulip solution partnership, extend capabilities beyond traditional consulting.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue is described at approximately $800 million in 2023 with expectations to exceed $1 billion in 2024 and guidance of about 30% growth. External recognition, including a #1 software and #2 overall placement on the 2024 Inc. 5000 with a reported 45,000%+ three-year growth rate, reinforces momentum.

Market Expansion: Operations are portrayed as scaling from roughly 250,000 properties and ~2.5 million annual work orders at the time of the SMS Assist deal to 280,000+ properties and 3–4 million annual work orders across 100+ metros in the U.S. and Canada. Leadership also highlights expanding a major client into Canada and appointing an EVP in 2025 to drive commercial growth.

Product Line Growth: Offerings are expanding with launches like Lessen360, Digital FM+, Lessen Copilot, and Aiden, alongside integrations such as Property Meld. These additions broaden the addressable product set and support continued platform adoption.

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: 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.

Strategic Partnerships: Partnerships with automakers such as Hyundai AutoEver, Lotus, and Amap, alongside cloud collaborations like AWS and ecosystem ties with Esri, continue to expand. These relationships appear to deepen distribution and integration across automotive and enterprise use cases.

Innovation-Driven Growth: The portfolio is expanding into AI, software-defined vehicles, ADAS, autonomous driving, and logistics, with launches such as HERE SDK updates and Location Reasoning. This trajectory indicates increasing focus on higher-value, future-oriented offerings.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Independent analyst indices (Omdia and Counterpoint) repeatedly place the company at the top of location-platform rankings, and installed vehicle use rose from 222M to 238M. These signals point to sustained competitive standing and broad automotive adoption.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue is rising at double-digit rates across recent periods, and management has increased full-year guidance, underscoring continued momentum. Growth is visible in both recent quarters and the prior year, indicating sustained top-line expansion.

Diversified Revenue Streams: Both Diagnostics and Data & Applications are expanding, with data-licensing/Insights activity increasing alongside clinical testing volumes. This mix reduces reliance on a single line of business and supports multiple growth vectors.

Strategic Partnerships: Collaborations with major biopharmaceutical companies and broader rollouts of platforms such as Next signal expanding commercial reach. Announced initiatives like a large whole‑genome dataset and work with firms including Merck reinforce external demand for the platform.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Recent securitizations, forward‑flow agreements, and financing facilities indicate robust, ongoing access to funding for loan and card originations. These commitments suggest the capacity to support continued scale.

Product Line Growth: The business has broadened from personal loans into credit cards and added tools like Credit Builder. This multi‑product approach is cited as a driver of its recent expansion.

Strategic Partnerships: New and ongoing partnerships with capital providers and a national sports brand expand distribution and strengthen funding channels. These relationships point to sustained origination activity and reach.

Market Expansion: The U.S. business broadened its reach, renaming to ABN AMRO Clearing USA in 2023 to reflect a “growing reach” and operating from Chicago and New York with clients trading across the U.S. and internationally. In 2026 it further widened access by enabling client connectivity to Bruce Markets’ overnight U.S. equities venue.

Product Line Growth: New capabilities were added in 2026, including a 24/7 clearing and risk-management model for eligible CME Group cryptocurrency futures and options. The expanded 24x5 U.S. equity offering alongside overnight venue access signals a broader suite of services for clients.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Audited 2025 U.S. financials show a sizable operating balance sheet and $800 million in members’ equity, with substantial funds segregated for regulatory purposes. This capital base underpins capacity to support larger client flows and ongoing investments.

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.

Profitability: Profitability is described as having improved substantially in 2025, with earnings growth outpacing balance-sheet expansion. Stronger net income accompanies continued momentum in lending.

Resilient & Sustainable Growth: Growth continues across members, assets, loans, and deposits over multiple years, including reaching a significant asset-scale milestone. Expansion in both consumer mortgages and commercial real estate lending reinforces an ongoing trajectory rather than a one-off spike.

Cost & Operational Efficiency: A digital-only, low-overhead operating model is credited with enabling efficient scale in assets and deposits. Low operating-expense levels support competitive pricing and reinvestment in digital capabilities.

Product Line Growth: Company updates point to a meaningful increase in product count in 2024, expanding the breadth of tradable products. Available evidence suggests this reflects operating-scale growth beyond hiring alone.

Market Expansion: The firm operates across Chicago, Boulder, New York, and Singapore, and signals expansion into new instruments and marketplaces domestically and globally. Physical office build-outs in Chicago further indicate an expanded footprint to accommodate growth.

Innovation-Driven Growth: Reported large increases in computing resources and major network upgrades in 2024 underscore ongoing investment in proprietary technology and infrastructure. Available evidence suggests these capacity gains are aimed at scaling trading capabilities.

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.

Strong Revenue Growth: ARR is reported to have surpassed $200M by June 2026 after crossing $100M in early 2025, with five consecutive years of 100% year-over-year growth. This consistent doubling signals rapid scaling at substantial revenue levels.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: Funding rounds include $75M in 2024 at a valuation above $1B and a $250M Series E in 2025 at a reported $2.2B, with total capital raised cited at $400M+. Such late-stage financing and rising valuations indicate robust access to growth capital.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Adoption is described as reaching roughly 1 in 6 U.S. apartments, with deep penetration among large property managers and hundreds of operators. Expansion into healthcare and notable distribution relationships have broadened its commercial footprint.

Strong Revenue Growth: Revenue has increased across FY24–FY26 with consecutive year-over-year gains, indicating steady top-line momentum. Company disclosures describe this as “purposeful” and oriented toward sustainable long-term growth alongside expansion in advisory and technology.

Investor Backing & Capital Strength: A strategic minority investment from New Mountain Capital was secured to accelerate growth, fund technology and talent, and support acquisitions. This signals enhanced capital resources to pursue the firm’s expansion agenda.

Product Line Growth: Capabilities have broadened through acquisitions and internal investment, adding areas such as cybersecurity, privacy, risk, digital transformation, and technology services (e.g., CompliancePoint and Harbour Results transactions). New leadership roles focused on growth, sales, and corporate development reinforce the expanding services mix.

Market Expansion: Feedback suggests Upside expanded its marketplace with 14,669 new retailer locations and 1.6M new customers in 2025, alongside 128M transactions and a 64% YoY jump in restaurant transactions in July 2025. Feedback suggests category breadth deepened as well, with Taco Bell locations up 400% year over year and the network reaching 100,000+ retailers and ~35M consumers.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Feedback suggests scale signals are substantial, including 35M consumers, 100,000+ retailers, >$1B cumulative cash back, and a rise in retailer incremental profit from $605M in 2024 to $707M in 2025. Feedback suggests repeated inclusion on growth rankings (e.g., Inc. 5000, Deloitte Technology Fast 500) further reflects momentum and visibility.

Strategic Partnerships: Feedback suggests partnerships and integrations broaden distribution and merchant adoption, including Marqeta and rollouts with large operators such as Save Mart and major QSR franchise groups. Feedback suggests these alliances extend Upside’s reach beyond the standalone app via partner networks that help drive consumer exposure and category expansion.

Innovation-Driven Growth: U.S. online sales are rising at double-digit rates (e.g., +18.2% in 2025 at constant rates and +14.3% to +14.5% in early 2026), supported by a completed proprietary e-commerce platform across all five U.S. brands. Growth is shifting toward omnichannel retail with loyalty, pharmacy, and store-based fulfillment becoming larger contributors.

Future-Ready Strategy: The company plans about 1,000 remodels and new store openings by 2028 and is investing in supply chain infrastructure, including a new automated distribution center in North Carolina. Management is also committing significant U.S. price investments through 2028 to reinforce customer value.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: The U.S. business operates more than 2,000 local brand stores with roughly $58–60 billion in annual sales and over 26 million weekly customer trips, and is described as the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast and fourth-largest in the U.S. This scale underpins stability across brands such as Food Lion, Hannaford, Giant Food, and Stop & Shop.

Market Expansion: A new Product, Engineering and Commercial Hub in Mexico City was opened in March 2026, with operations reported across 25 countries and 17 regional offices. Customer and platform scale advanced to 800+ brands and $7B+ in managed ad spend by 2026.

Product Line Growth: Capabilities expanded beyond social advertising into audio and CTV via integrations such as Spotify and Roku, and into measurement through the INCRMNTAL acquisition. Additional channel integrations like LinkedIn further broaden the platform’s addressable market.

Strong Market Position & Advantage: Recognition as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Creative Advertising Technologies (Q4 2024) alongside multi‑billion‑dollar ad‑spend scale across hundreds of brands points to a defensible position. Broad partnerships across major advertising platforms reinforce this standing.