Shadow Funding, Investors & Competitors

Alphabet is a holding company that wholly owns internet giant Google. The California-based company derives slightly less than 90% of its revenue from Google services, the vast majority of which is advertising sales. Alongside online ads, Google services houses sales stemming from Google’s subscription services (YouTube TV and YouTube Music, among others), platforms (sales and in-app purchases on Play Store), and devices (Chromebooks, Pixel smartphones, and smart home products such as Chromecast). Google’s cloud computing platform accounts for roughly 10% of Alphabet’s revenue. The firm’s investments in up-and-coming technologies such as self-driving cars (Waymo), health (Verily), and internet access (Google Fiber) make up the rest.

Baidu is the largest internet search engine in China with over 50% share of the search engine market in 2024 per web analytics firm, Statcounter. The firm generated 70% of core revenue from online marketing services from its search engine in 2024. Outside its search engine, Baidu is a technology-driven company and its other major growth initiatives are artificial intelligence cloud, video streaming services, voice recognition technology, and autonomous driving.

Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging platform supporting text, voice, video calls, file sharing up to 2GB, and channels for broadcasts to unlimited subscribers. Available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, it offers end-to-end encrypted Secret Chats, self-destructing messages, and bot APIs for automation. Telegram operates servers in multiple data centers worldwide, serving users across 200 countries with synchronization across unlimited devices.

Box is a cloud-based content management platform that provides storage and workflow collaboration services for enterprise customers. The firm was founded in 2005 as a file, sync, and share provider. Over time, it built out and acquired workflow and security tools to evolve the pure-play FSS business into a content management business. Most recently, Box has been pursuing an AI-powered, intelligent content management strategy that can allow for metadata extraction and workflow automation.

InMobi is a Bangalore-headquartered mobile advertising technology company that operates the Miip platform connecting advertisers with publishers through programmatic buying and audience insights. The company powers personalized ad experiences across apps and mobile web in over 20 markets worldwide. InMobi also runs Glance, a lockscreen content platform available on Android devices in India and Southeast Asia delivering news, sports, and entertainment feeds. Discovery, another InMobi service, enables marketers to build mobile-first consumer relationships via contextual data signals. The firm partners with brands like Unilever and Procter & Gamble for performance-driven campaigns.

The Bot Company is a developer of AI-powered robots and GenAI chatbots that automate household tasks and boost customer interactions through conversational platforms. Offering robotic solutions for routine chores and enterprise-grade chat interfaces, the firm focuses on platforms that integrate voice and text AI for seamless user experiences. Based online with a global reach, it emphasizes accessible automation technologies.

Lightricks is a Herzliya-based creator of mobile apps for photo and video editing. The company produces Facetune for selfie enhancement, Videoleap for video creation, and Photoleap for AI-powered image manipulation. Founded in 2013, Lightricks serves over 100 million users worldwide through its suite of tools that incorporate AI, machine learning, and computer vision. Available on iOS and Android, the apps enable quick content creation for social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The Israel-headquartered firm expanded into enterprise solutions and maintains development teams in Europe and the US.

IReader Technology Co Ltd operates as a mobile software development company. It develops, and markets mobile phone reading application known as iReader e-book reader, a software for mobile reading APP. The app is developed for both android and iPhone platform. Geographically the activities are carried out through China.

Picsart is the largest all-in-one digital creation platform for photo and video editing. Miami-headquartered with offices worldwide, Picsart provides AI tools for design, drawing, and content sharing via mobile apps and web interfaces. The platform maintains an extensive open-source library of stickers, templates, backgrounds, and effects. Businesses access image processing through APIs and SDKs for marketing and content production. Picsart serves consumers, creators, and enterprises across personal and professional workflows.

Wondershare Technology Group Co Ltd, formerly Wondershare Technology Co Ltd is a China-based company engages in the manufacture and sale of a software application. It offers multimedia, utility, office, mobile, and other software products, as well as featured products. The company's products can be applied to personal computers, tablet PCs, smartphones and other application terminals.

Microsoft develops and licenses consumer and enterprise software. It is known for its Windows operating systems and Office productivity suite. The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes (legacy Microsoft Office, cloud-based Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, LinkedIn, Dynamics), intelligence cloud (infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service offerings Azure, Windows Server OS, SQL Server), and more personal computing (Windows Client, Xbox, Bing search, display advertising, and Surface laptops, tablets, and desktops).

Oracle provides enterprise applications and infrastructure offerings through a variety of flexible IT deployment models, including on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid. Founded in 1977, Oracle pioneered the first commercial SQL-based relational database management system, which is commonly used by the world’s largest companies for high-volume online transaction processing workloads. Besides databases, Oracle also sells enterprise resource planning platforms and cloud infrastructure that play an increasingly important role in large language model training and inferencing.

Cisco Systems is the largest provider of networking equipment in the world and one of the largest software companies in the world. Its largest businesses are selling networking hardware and software (where it has leading market shares) and cybersecurity software such as firewalls. It also has collaboration products, like its Webex suite, and observability tools. It primarily outsources its manufacturing to third parties and has a large sales and marketing staff—25,000 strong across 90 countries. Overall, Cisco employs 80,000 people and sells its products globally.

Dell Technologies is a broad information technology vendor, primarily supplying hardware to enterprises. It focuses on premium and commercial personal computers, as well as enterprise on-premises data center hardware. It holds top-three market shares in its core markets of personal computers, peripheral displays, mainstream servers, and external storage. Dell has a robust ecosystem of component and assembly partners, and also relies heavily on channel partners to fulfill its sales.

Alibaba is the world's largest online and mobile commerce company as measured by gross merchandise volume. It operates China's online marketplaces, including Taobao (consumer-to-consumer) and Tmall (business-to-consumer). The China retail e-commerce platform is the most valuable cash flow-generating business at Alibaba. Additional revenue sources include China wholesale e-commerce, international retail and wholesale e-commerce, local consumer services, travel services, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, Cainiao logistics services, and other businesses.

Incorporated in 1911, International Business Machines, or IBM, is one of the oldest technology companies in the world. It provides software, IT consulting services, and hardware to help business customers modernize their technology workflows. IBM operates in 175 countries and employs approximately 300,000 people. The company has a robust roster of business partners to service its clients, which includes 95% of all Fortune 500 companies. IBM’s products, including Red Hat, watsonx, and mainframes, handle some of the world’s most important data workloads in areas like finance and retail.

Databricks is a San Francisco-headquartered cloud platform unifying data engineering, analytics, and AI on a lakehouse architecture. Founded in 2013, it supports Delta Lake for reliable data lakes, MLflow for machine learning lifecycle management, and Unity Catalog for governance across workspaces. The platform powers ETL pipelines, serverless SQL warehouses, and generative AI model deployment for enterprises worldwide, including integrations with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

ServiceNow Inc provides software solutions to structure and automate various business processes via a SaaS delivery model. The company primarily focuses on the IT function for enterprise customers. ServiceNow began with IT service management, expanded within the IT function, and more recently directed its workflow automation logic to functional areas beyond IT, notably customer service, HR service delivery, and security operations. ServiceNow also offers an application development platform as a service.