29. Ramp

Founders: Eric Glyman (CEO), Karim Atiyeh, Gene Lee
Launched: 2019
Headquarters: New York City
Funding: $1.4 billion
Valuation: $8.1 billion
Key technologies: Artificial intelligence, machine learning
Industry: Fintech
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 0

Thanks to a new wave of fintech startups, corporate credit cards do a lot more than transactions these days. One of the fastest growing is Ramp, which uses AI-assisted software to automate expense reporting. Founded in 2019, Ramp has grown quickly, reaching $100 million in annualized revenue in early 2022.

Ramp works with businesses both large and small, helping clients track spending and save money through contract negotiations or duplicated spent alerts. Ramp says it helps the average company cut their expenses by 3.4% a year and shorten the time spent on monthly bookkeeping by about a week. 

Its valuation has climbed steadily. In August 2021, when its value more than doubled to $3.6 billion from just five months earlier, CEO Ramp Eric Glyman told CNBC, "The speed that this has happened is, I think, fairly unprecedented. Most businesses tend to slow down in terms of growth rate as they get larger, and we've actually experienced some of the fastest growth we've ever had despite the fact that the absolute size of the business is larger."

In March 2022, when the company raised $750 million in financing from major existing investors plus some new ones — a time when the fundraising market was spurning many startups — Ramp reached its current $8.1 billion valuation.

Ramp has been busy adding new services too. Early last year, it launched Ramp for Travel, which lets employees book travel with any service they want while giving employers visibility into travel spending patterns: airline, specific routes, whether it was economy or business class, lodging and per diem costs. It introduced a new credit underwriting system that gives businesses the chance to access credit limits that are up to 30 times higher than traditional offerings. It also released an automated bill payment feature that draws on flexible short-term financing and a receipt-matching feature with Amazon Business, simplifying expense reports by automatically matching receipts with transactions. 

As companies contend with higher interest rates and brace for recession through curbed spending and layoffs, fintech companies like Ramp could see slowing interest, but Glyman sees an opportunity to expand internationally. Last year, the startup introduced international bill payments, giving companies the ability to pay bills and expense reimbursements in local currency. 

While Ramp has seen fast growth, it's also facing plenty of competition in a crowded space. Companies such as Bill.com, 2023 No. 2 Disruptor company Brex, Airbase, TripActions and others are rushing out competing services. It's also coming up against giant incumbents such as American Express and Concur.