6. Ramp
Ramp offers tools to automate finance, streamlining payments, cutting costs, and freeing up corporate teams to focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets
Founders: Eric Glyman (CEO), Karim Atiyeh
Launched: 2019
Headquarters: New York City
Funding: $1.2 billion
Valuation: $13 billion
Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, machine learning
Industry: Fintech
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 2 (No. 32 in 2024)
When companies are under pressure to do more with less, managing spend becomes a top priority. Ramp, a financial operations platform, is part of a growing number of tools designed to automate that process by streamlining payments, cutting costs, and freeing up finance teams to focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets.
Since its launch six years ago, Ramp has become one of the fastest-growing players in the space. It now serves more than 30,000 U.S. companies, ranging from startups like Olipop to large enterprises like CBRE and ZipRecruiter. The company issues credit cards and automates expenses and accounting. It makes money from credit card interchange fees and software subscriptions.
"Our core value proposition is helping businesses achieve more with less and spend less, which went from a-nice-to-have to truly the difference between whether you would exist or not in 2022 and 2023," CEO Eric Glyman told CNBC in March.
At a time when others in Silicon Valley have had to cut back, Ramp has managed to raise more money. In March, the company secured a $150 million secondary deal led by Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital and General Catalyst that valued the company at $13 billion.
The spend management space has also become more crowded with players like Brex, Navan, Expensify, Mesh Payments, Airbase and Center fighting for market share all while competing against legacy players such as American Express, SAP Concur and Bill.com. Ramp's new additions will be critical to its continued growth.
Over the past year, Ramp has doubled down on its focus on enterprise companies and added new features. In January, it launched Ramp Treasury, which allows companies to earn 2.5% on idle operating cash. It also acquired Venue, an AI-powered procurement software startup, and used it to roll out new vendor payment tools. In June, it debuted Ramp Travel, partnering with Priceline to use AI and automation to streamline and simplify the process of booking and managing expenses for corporate travel, moving into a space squarely in the sights of fellow Disruptor Navan. Other product launches include App Center, which deepened integrations with popular enterprise tools like Microsoft Dynamics, Workday, and QuickBooks Desktop.
Internally, Ramp promoted two executives to top roles, naming Will Petrie to CFO and Geoff Charles to chief product officer. It also opened a new San Francisco office to expand its talent base. Ramp now employs more than 1,000 people.
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This story originally appeared on: CNBC - Author:Ellen Sheng
