The Technology Stack of Billion Dollar Startups

The technologies that leading private companies are using (aka their Tech Stack) are now available on their CB Insights profiles.  With the addition of this tech stack data on programming languages, frameworks, and databases powering startups across the tech ecosystem, we wanted analyze what technologies are being used by today’s most valuable startups.

Specifically, we analyzed the tech stacks of private venture-backed companies with valuations at or over $1 billion.

Here’s the data.

Programming Languages – Javascript on Top

JavaScript was the most popular programming language, with 81% of companies using the programming language. Python (67%), Java (64%), Perl (44%), and PHP (42%) rounded out the top 5 in terms of usage.

Git Leads Frameworks/Libraries

Git, the version control system behind Github, unsurprisingly ranked first in terms of utilized frameworks/libraries with 70% of all companies for which we had data utilizing the library. Jquery and Node.js, two of the most popular libraries on Github, were both in the top 10, due to their association with Javascript, the aforementioned most popular programming language.

SQL Trumps NoSQL (Not Surprisingly)

SQL databases dominated the top 10 with MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL all making their way onto the list. Big data-related databases such as Hive, Hbase, Cassandra, and Vertica also were among the most commonly used, driven by the tech stacks of Big Data-focused companies such as Cloudera and Hortonworks. Notably, of the top 10, all but 2 of the databases were open-source (Vertica and Oracle were not), pointing to the overwhelming usage of open-source technology in today’s tech companies.

We will continue to monitor the tech stack data as it pertains to the billion-dollar club, and if you’d like to to stay abreast of additional tech stack analysis, sign up for our newsletter. Subscribers with access to CB Insights on the Division plan can check out the “Tech Stack” tab on company profiles for information ranging from programming languages to operating systems to software applications used by today’s high-growth private technology companies.