Amazon plans a new rival for retailers: a physical clothing store.

A booming ecosystem of highly valued, cash-rich start-ups in Silicon Valley and beyond are expanding at breakneck speed and trying to unseat stalwart companies in all kinds of fields. And few in the industry see a limit to the growth, Erin Griffith reports for The New York Times.

The funding frenzy follows nearly two years of a pandemic when people and businesses increasingly relied on tech, creating bottomless opportunities for start-ups to exploit. There are now more than 900 tech start-ups each worth more than $1 billion. In 2015, 80 seemed like a lot.

The activity has crossed into even frothier territory in recent months, as tech start-ups offering food delivery, remote-work software and telehealth services realized that they not only would survive the pandemic but were in higher demand than ever. The money hit a fever pitch in the final months of 2021 as investors chased a limited pool of start-ups and as tech stocks like Apple, which topped a valuation of $3 trillion, reached new heights.

The big-money headlines have carried into this year. Over a few days this month, three private start-ups hit eye-popping valuations: Miro, a digital whiteboard company, was valued at $17.75 billion; Checkout.com, a payments company, was valued at $40 billion; and OpenSea, a 90-person start-up that lets people buy and sell nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs, was valued at $13.3 billion.

“The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow has become bigger than ever,” said Mike Ghaffary, an investor at Canvas Ventures. “You can invest in a company that could one day be a trillion-dollar company.”

There’s more money and more bubbly behavior. Investors insist it’s rational. READ THE ARTICLE →

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/20/business/stock-market-economy-news