We start 2020 with a new unicorn every two to three business days. By September 2020 that jumped to one per business day. The pace in 2021 has come up to two or three per business day, with more than 400 companies joining the board this year so far.
Valuations have also risen. The companies on the unicorn board are currently valued at $ 3.4 trillion, an increase in value of $ 1.4 trillion in less than a year, excluding the unicorns that came out.
The four top-rated private companies include two based in China and two based in the United States. These include China’s ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and Ant Group, and US companies Stripe (which is also based in Dublin) and SpaceX. These four companies alone would wipe out $ 500 billion in value if they went public.
The company with the highest valuation in a financing round in 2021 is Stripe, valued at $ 95 billion in its Series H financing of $ 600 million. Stripe’s total funding is $ 2.2 billion per Crunchbase data.
We found seven companies that are “quadracorns” (valued at more than $ 40 billion). The most recent to achieve this elevated status are Sydney-based Canva and Stockholm-based Klarna.
Seven other companies, with a value of $ 30 billion and more that are still private, reached the “tricorn” valuation. These include Instacart, Databricks, Flipkart, Revolut, Nubank, and Cruise, which come from the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and Brazil.
Changing trends by continent
Unicorn business financing by continent per year shows dramatic changes over time.
In 2021, to date, US-based companies have raised $ 99 billion, an increase of more than 50 percent year-over-year. Asia is currently at $ 51 billion, also a marginal year-over-year increase.
Europe has risen significantly, almost three times, year over year, with $ 39 billion invested in unicorn companies. And Latin America has as much as $ 10 billion, showing a nearly four-fold increase year-over-year so far.
2021 IPOs swell
Exits have also increased in 2021. We found that 83 unicorn-valued companies that went public in 2021 to date, are collectively valued at just under $ 1 trillion in IPO, compared to 2020 with 38 listings and a debut value. of $ 394 billion.
Unicorn company valuations on the IPO show a much higher range in 2021 compared to previous years. So far, 22 unicorn companies have gone public above $ 10 billion in 2021, compared to 13 companies in 2020. In all previous years, counts above $ 10 billion at debut were at the lower digits.
We expect the pace of private unicorns going public to continue at a strong pace in 2022, with close to 1,000 companies on the board alongside the rise in valuations of public technology stocks over the past 18 months.
Crunchbase Pro Queries Relevant to This Article
Crunchbase Unicorn Plate (~ 1,000)
Unicorns Abandoned on Crunchbase (338)
Emerging Unicorns on Crunchbase (268)
By region
Unicorns in the United States (481)
European private unicorns (132)
Unicorns of Latin America (22)
Asia-based unicorns (349)
North American and European unicorns valued above $ 10 billion (23)
