50 startups that will boom in 2018, according to VCs

50 hot startups 2018

2018 is almost upon us and so it is once again time to predict which startups will take the tech industry by storm next year.

Who better to ask than the startup experts, the VCs that watch the industry, guide the startups, hear their pitches, and invest in them?

We reached out to a number of top VCs and asked them which startups will boom in 2018. We invited participation from investors from a variety of backgrounds and investing philosophies. This includes some of the top VCs in the Valley (Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Bessemer, Greylock Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia).

We included VCs of note who specialize in seed and early rounds (8VC, Bloomberg Beta, BBG Ventures — which backs startups with at least one female founder.) We also asked some top VCs from the startup nation Israel (JVC, OurCrowd) and VCs that have been known for picking hits (like IVP's Somash Dash).

We asked them to name a company they've backed that's on track to have a great 2018. After all, they believed in those companies so much they invested. But we also asked them to name another startup they think is cool that they don't have any financial interest in.

As startup lovers, they gave us this list chock full of amazing up-and-comers creating tech for businesses, gamers, personalized health, robots, high-tech money, new forms of super computers, and even outer space.

Nauto: An artificially intelligent dashcam for vehicles

Company name: Nauto

VC: Reid Hoffman at Greylock

Relationship: Investor

Funding: $173.9 million

What it does: Nauto makes a cloud-based, artificially intelligent, networked camera for vehicles. It helps to identify dangers to drivers, provides feedback at the end of trips, and also analyzes the cause of accidents to reduce false liability claims.

Why it's hot: "Soon, driving will become a networked and highly collaborative activity — cars on the road will benefit from what other cars have learned. Nauto is rethinking transportation safety by using AI, and founder Stefan [Heck] is seeking to completely redefine the transport grid," says Hoffman.

Heck is a 20-year transportation veteran who is a research fellow and teacher at Stanford, and a member of the Energy Transformation Collaborative (ETC).

Rigetti Computing: A startup taking on quantum computing

Company name: Rigetti Computing

VC: Reid Hoffman at Greylock

Relationship: No relation. VC just thinks it's cool.

Funding: $69.5 million

What it does: Rigetti Computing is developing technology to help usher in a new kind of powerful computer known as quantum computing.

Why it's hot: “Quantum computing is going to be a very large industry and the promise of a large quantum computer is incredibly powerful. Companies like Microsoft, Google and Intel have experimented with quantum computers, but Rigetti Computing is taking a unique approach. The startup is building a business from scratch to build a quantum computing chip," says Hoffman.

Rigetti Computing was also named among the "51 enterprise startups to bet your career on in 2018."

Pindrop: Stopping voice fraudsters

Company name: Pindrop

VCs: Martin Casado at Andreessen Horowitz and Somesh Dash at IVP

Relationship: both VCs are investors

Funding: $122.8 million

What it does: Pindrop is used by call centers to analyzes a person's voice and detect fraud. It can even determine if a voice is real or generated by a computer.

Why it's hot: "Voice as a way to interact with computer systems is becoming more and more pervasive, whether we’re talking to Alexa at home or interacting with an automated system online," Casado says, adding that voice fraud has been a huge hole in security until now.

"They are detecting unprecedented amounts of phone fraud and saving leading financial institutions tens of millions of dollars annually," says Dash.

Pindrop also recently nabbed legendary former Cisco CEO John Chambers as an investor and board member.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider