Washington’s tech industry hasn’t been immune to the pandemic. Companies such as the IT giant DXC and the event-organizing platform Cvent cut jobs amid the slowdown. But some, including the hot cloud-computing company Appian, committed to hundreds of new hires. Indeed, plenty of other good business news came from Washingtonian’s Tech Titans during the past year. Our 2021 winners—who were selected through both reporting and an informal process of nominations from their peers—managed to start up new and innovative companies, close on huge funding rounds, ink massive contracts, and announce initial public offerings. Some of this year’s Tech Titans expanded their companies not only in spite of the pandemic but because of it. Michael Chasen, founder of the “edtech” firm Blackboard, leveraged the demand for at-home education to launch Class, a company that creates virtual classrooms using Zoom. Class has already raised more than $40 million. Blake Hall, founder of ID.me, which offers digital identity-verification tools, saw a surge in demand from state unemployment agencies that suddenly had to process millions of applicants.