Top 10 Turkish Tech Startups in 2026

Peak Games definitively proved Istanbul's capacity to produce world-class mobile game intellectual property, well before the city's broader tech reputation was established. Founded in 2010, the studio developed Toon Blast and Toy Blast into highly successful franchise-level hits, each consistently maintaining tens of millions of monthly active users. In 2020, Zynga acquired Peak Games for $1.8 billion, marking one of the largest mobile gaming acquisitions of that year. Even years after their initial launch, Peak's titles remain prominently featured in top-grossing puzzle charts, a testament to the Istanbul team's strong live-operations discipline. The acquisition provided Zynga—and subsequently Take-Two Interactive, which acquired Zynga for $12.7 billion in 2022—with a consistently profitable mobile gaming engine in a segment that many major American studios had previously underestimated.

Hepsiburada has been a cornerstone of Turkish e-commerce since its inception in 2000, making it the oldest and arguably most resilient company on this list, having navigated multiple currency crises. In July 2021, it became the first Turkish tech company to list on NASDAQ under the ticker HEPS, opening the sector to international institutional investors. The platform offers a comprehensive range of products including electronics, home goods, fashion, and groceries, all fulfilled through its proprietary HepsiJet logistics network. Its HepsiPay digital wallet and buy-now-pay-later products transform a simple shopping relationship into a broader financial services touchpoint. Having adapted to numerous cycles of lira depreciation and inflation since 2000, Hepsiburada’s proven ability to adjust its pricing and logistics models to macroeconomic turbulence provides a competitive moat that newer entrants have not yet faced.

Founded in Istanbul in 2012, Insider is a B2B AI marketing platform that directly competes with industry giants like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud within the enterprise segment. It provides personalization, cross-channel journey orchestration, and campaign automation for over 1,200 enterprise clients across more than 100 countries, giving it a multinational footprint that significantly surpasses any other company on this list. Insider achieved unicorn status with a valuation exceeding $1 billion, backed by prominent investors including Sequoia Capital's growth fund. The platform's core advantage lies in its unified customer data layer; unlike legacy point solutions that often require months of IT integration, Insider seamlessly connects web, mobile, email, push, and SMS channels into a single orchestration engine right out of the box. For enterprise buyers in retail, finance, and travel, this speed of integration is the primary driver for choosing Insider over established Western competitors.

Param carved out its niche by addressing a critical gap left by larger banks and established processors: providing modern digital payment infrastructure to Turkish small and mid-sized businesses without the complexity or cost associated with enterprise-grade solutions. The platform offers payment acceptance, digital wallet services, and business financial management tools specifically tailored for SMEs. Turkey consistently ranks among Europe's highest-volume markets for contactless payment transactions, providing Param with a strong, unlikely-to-reverse macro tailwind. This distinction makes the two companies complementary rather than direct substitutes within Turkey's evolving payments ecosystem. Param's growth trajectory is closely linked to the country’s broader SME digitization wave, which significantly accelerated after 2020 as pandemic pressures pushed offline businesses towards rapid digital payment adoption.

Iyzico launched in 2013 with a clear mission: to simplify online payment acceptance for Turkish merchants, bringing it to the same standard as in Germany or the UK. By the time PayU, a global payments group backed by Naspers, acquired the company in 2019, Iyzico had become the go-to payment gateway for Turkish e-commerce startups. Its developer-friendly API dramatically reduced integration times from weeks to just days. Operating today under the PayU umbrella, Iyzico continues to support Turkish merchants with checkout optimization, installment payment tools that boost conversion in a high-card-usage market, and scalable fraud protection infrastructure that keeps pace with increasing e-commerce volume.

Armut—Turkish for 'pear'—is Turkey’s leading home services marketplace, expertly connecting consumers with a vast array of service professionals, including electricians, plumbers, cleaners, and tutors. It operates in the same vein as Angi in the US or Checkatrade in the UK, establishing a crucial layer of trust through verified reviews in a market where quality assurance for tradespeople has historically relied solely on word-ofmouth. Founded in 2014, Armut has curated a network of thousands of verified professionals across Turkey’s major urban centers. Its supply side is built on a lead-generation revenue model rather than subscriptions; service providers pay per confirmed job lead, directly aligning platform incentives with completed work and maintaining a low barrier to entry for independent tradespeople. As Turkish consumers increasingly manage household logistics via mobile, Armut’s category—characterized by high-frequency interactions and resistance to pure-price competition—has proven more resilient than comparable models in product e-commerce.

Martı introduced Turkey's first licensed e-scooter service in Istanbul in 2019 and has since grown into the country’s dominant micro-mobility operator across multiple cities. Unlike single-mode scooter companies such as Lime or Bird, Martı expanded its application to include ride-hailing, strategically positioning itself as a comprehensive urban transport layer. Turkey's dense, traffic-heavy cities and a national median age of approximately 32 years provide Martı with more favorable unit economics than many Western micro-mobility operators, where usage often skews towards tourists rather than daily commuters. By 2024, the platform had facilitated millions of rides and was actively exploring electric moped and cargo logistics verticals as adjacent revenue streams. For investors monitoring Turkey's mobility sector, Martı represents the clearest opportunity in urban transport digitization within a country of 85 million people, whose infrastructure is particularly well-suited for short-distance electric mobility.