LinkedIn News named these 10 companies its 2025 Top Startups for the New York City metropolitan area, in rank order: David, Ramp, Headway, Glean, Charlie Health, Caraway Home, Rogo, Persona, Vanta and Quince. The list was published October 29, 2025, and reflects LinkedIn platform and workforce signals measured from July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025—not a universal measure of which startups are “hottest” or most likely to succeed. Some companies on the list are headquartered outside New York but have a qualifying local workforce.
LinkedIn’s 2025 NYC startup ranking, in order
LinkedIn News published its second annual New York City Top Startups list on October 29, 2025. The company descriptions and ranking below are from LinkedIn’s list.
| Rank | Company | Sector and offering | Headquarters and NYC connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | David | Protein-focused food company, best known for protein bars | New York City |
| 2 | Ramp | Financial services | New York City |
| 3 | Headway | Mental healthcare | New York City |
| 4 | Glean | Software | Headquartered in Palo Alto, California; included for its NYC employee base |
| 5 | Charlie Health | Mental healthcare | Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana; included for its NYC employee base |
| 6 | Caraway Home | Direct-to-consumer cookware | New York City |
| 7 | Rogo | Software | New York City |
| 8 | Persona | Not specified in LinkedIn’s summary | Headquartered in San Francisco, California; included for its NYC employee base |
| 9 | Vanta | Not specified in LinkedIn’s summary | Headquartered in San Francisco, California; included for its NYC employee base |
| 10 | Quince | Not specified in LinkedIn’s summary | Headquartered in San Francisco, California; included for its NYC employee base |
LinkedIn’s local employee counts were rounded to the nearest five unless marked with an asterisk. The article describes unstarred counts as company-provided and starred counts as based on LinkedIn data; those figures are snapshots tied to the list’s publication, not current headcounts.
What LinkedIn means by “top”
The ranking is based on four measures during July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025: employee growth, jobseeker interest, member engagement with the company and its employees, and the company’s ability to attract talent from LinkedIn Top Companies. Eligible companies needed at least 5% employee growth during the measurement period. LinkedIn considered local job views and applications, local views and follows of company pages and employee profiles, and employees recruited from LinkedIn Top Companies as a share of the startup’s workforce. It normalized data across eligible companies. LinkedIn does not publish company-level pillar scores, so the list does not show why one company outranked another.
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Eligibility rules
To qualify, a company had to be fully independent, privately held, headquartered in the United States, seven years old or younger, and have at least 30 full-time employees in the city. LinkedIn excluded companies reported to have laid off at least 10% of their workforce during the defined period, as well as staffing firms, think tanks, venture capital firms, law firms, management and IT consulting firms, nonprofits and philanthropy, accelerators, and government-owned entities.
How to read the geography
“New York City” is the ranking’s local workforce geography, not a claim that every company is headquartered in the city. Glean, Charlie Health, Persona, Vanta and Quince are examples of out-of-city headquarters with a qualifying NYC employee presence. The list is therefore not a census of NYC-headquartered startups, a venture-capital ranking, a product review or a forecast of business success.
Rank #2
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What the list says about the NYC startup mix
The ten companies span consumer food and cookware, financial services, mental healthcare, and software. That variety is useful for readers considering local employers, but the ranking itself does not measure investment returns, company financial health, product quality or career fit. Use it as a starting point for researching a company’s work, location, role openings and business model—not as an endorsement.
For product-oriented businesses, David’s profile is tied to protein bars and Caraway Home’s to cookware. LinkedIn’s descriptions establish those categories but do not support additional claims about nutrition, performance or product quality.
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Citywide startup and technology statistics come from different publishers, dates and definitions; they should not be treated as one harmonized dataset.
- Tech:NYC, 2025: $15.84 billion raised by NYC-based AI companies, up 50% from 2024; 203,000+ tech jobs; 2,000+ AI startups; and 40,000 AI professionals. Tech:NYC also reports that AI companies leased over 486,000 square feet of Manhattan office space during 2025.
- Tech:NYC citing PitchBook, 2025: $28 billion raised by NYC tech companies, up 8% from 2024; and $13 billion raised by NYC fintech, healthtech, and physical AI/robotics companies.
- NYCEDC, January 2025, summarizing its Applied AI report: more than 25,000 tech startups, more than 1,200 active venture capital firms, more than 360,000 tech ecosystem employees, more than 40,000 New York metro workers with AI skills, and more than 2,000 NYC-based AI startups. NYCEDC also said approximately one-third of venture capital raised by city startups in 2023 went to AI.
These counts differ in geography, timing and methodology. In particular, the NYCEDC employee estimate and Tech:NYC’s tech-jobs figure should not be compared as if they used the same definition. Tech:NYC also describes its own membership and programs: more than 500 members in 2025, including 395 startups and 20 venture firms; AI companies made up more than 20% of members, and the group says it spotlighted 54 startups and tracked over 200 Series A rounds. Those are organizational claims, not measurements of the entire city. See Tech:NYC’s 2025 annual report and NYCEDC’s January 2025 announcement for their respective contexts.
A separate Tech:NYC reports listing identifies the 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Report as a partnership with Startup Genome and NYCEDC. That report analyzed data from five million startups in more than 350 ecosystems and ranked NYC the world’s second-strongest tech hub. This is an ecosystem ranking, not a ranking of individual companies.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Other signs of startup activity
Techstars’ December 5, 2025 announcement about its Fall 2025 New York City cohort describes startups working in AI infrastructure and agents, biotech and genomics, AI drug discovery, fintech, proptech, government and intelligence, dual-use data, and supply-chain compliance. Named examples in the announcement include Cloud 9, Crosscheck, Evrim, Intelital and Nephrogen. This is one accelerator’s selected cohort, not a substitute for LinkedIn’s list or a citywide ranking. See Techstars’ cohort announcement.
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